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Dessert

Sweet Potatoes

A baked sweet potato dessert with sugar, butter, cinnamon, almonds, walnuts, sherry, raisins, and optional marshmallow topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil sweet potatoes as you would Irish potatoes.

  2. Drain and mash the sweet potatoes.

  3. Season with sugar, butter, and cinnamon or your preferred spice.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking pan.

  2. For a variation, add walnuts, Sherry wine, and raisins before baking.

  3. Sprinkle the top with ground almonds and bits of butter.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

  5. Top with marshmallow for a lovely meringue, if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Almond + walnuttop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together993 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sweet potato + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together62 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the mashed base that gives the casserole its body and soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the mash moist.
Ground almonds
Sprinkled on top, they add nutty flavour and help the surface brown.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty bite to the mashed sweet potato.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned. Sugar in the mash caramelises and proteins brown at high heat, so the top can scorch if left too long. Watch the colour rather than only the clock.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, sugar, butter, cinnamon, almond, sherry, wine):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sugar, butter, cinnamon, almond, sherry, wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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