Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked custard-like pie made with sweet potatoes, eggs, sugar, butter, spices, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

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 the filling

  1. Boil sweet potatoes until tender, then strain through a sieve.

  2. In a bowl, combine the strained sweet potatoes with beaten eggs, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, and lemon peel or essence.

  3. Add cream gradually until the mixture becomes a thin batter.

Bake

  1. Prepare a pie crust in a baking dish.

  2. Pour the batter into the crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the filling, setting into a smooth, sliceable custard.
Eggs
Set the filling as they cook, giving it structure and a firm texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly at the edges.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the filling.
Cream
Thins the mixture into a pourable batter and adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Adding the cream. Cream should be added gradually so the batter thins evenly without becoming too runny. Too much liquid can stop the eggs and sweet potato from setting firmly when baked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, egg, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove. 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.

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes