Skip to main content
Dessert

Pineapple and Sweet Potatoes

A baked dish of sweet potatoes and pineapple in a buttery syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pineapple and sweet potato share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 71 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pineapple and Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Drain the pineapple.

  2. Cut the pineapple into small pieces.

  3. Cook the sweet potatoes until tender.

  4. Cut the sweet potatoes into pieces.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, cook the pineapple juice with the butter and flour until thick.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. In a baking dish, combine the pineapple and sweet potatoes.

  2. Pour the syrup over them.

  3. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until heated through and browned.

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. Pineapple + sweet potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy, tender body of the dish once cooked and baked.
Pineapple
Adds moisture and bright, tangy sweetness that balances the starch.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the syrup taste smooth and rounded.
Flour
Thickens the pineapple juice into a syrup that clings to the fruit and potatoes.
Sugar
Sweetens the syrup and helps the top brown during baking.

The step that matters

Cooking the syrup until thick. Flour needs to be cooked long enough to thicken the juice fully; undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin sauce that pools instead of clinging to the dish.

Swap the pineapple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Pineapplethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, flour, 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.

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesPineapple SherbetPineapple Sherbet116 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesPineapple PuddingPineapple Pudding72 recipes