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Sweet Potatoes Au Gratin

A baked dish of sliced sweet potatoes layered with salt, pepper, butter, sugar, water, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the sweet potatoes crosswise and layer them in a baking dish.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt, black pepper, bits of butter, and a little sugar.

  3. Pour in 3 to 4 tablespoons of hot water mixed with 1 teaspoon of melted butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Top with salted and peppered cracker crumbs and add bits of butter on top.

  2. Cover and bake until heated through, then uncover and brown lightly.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and creamy as they cook.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top brown lightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and supports browning on the surface.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping that contrasts with the soft potatoes.

The step that matters

Covering the dish while baking. Covering traps steam so the potatoes cook through evenly and become tender. Uncovering only at the end lets the top brown without drying the layers beneath.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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