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Candied Sweet Potatoes

Candied sweet potatoes are boiled or steamed, sliced, and cooked with butter and brown sugar until syrupy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Candied 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

  1. Boil or steam the sweet potatoes until tender.

  2. Scrape and slice the sweet potatoes.

Make the candied sweet potatoes

  1. Layer the sweet potatoes in a pan with butter and brown sugar.

  2. Cook on the stove until candied.

  3. Place in a saucepan and cook until a thick syrup forms.

Bake instead

  1. Alternatively, wipe and brush the sweet potatoes with a little grease and bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until mealy and soft.

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.

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. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, mealy texture when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the potatoes brown and carry the flavor.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the dish and melts into a thick syrup that glazes the potatoes.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup. Sugar burns quickly once it darkens, so the butter and brown sugar should be cooked gently until the syrup thickens and coats the potatoes without scorching.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar):

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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