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Sweet Potatoes, Scalloped

A baked dish of sliced sweet potatoes layered with butter, breadcrumbs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes, Scalloped

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then peel and slice them crosswise.

  2. Arrange the slices in a buttered baking dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Sprinkle each layer with a few crumbs, bits of butter, and a little salt.

  2. Make the top layer thick with crumbs.

  3. Dot generously with butter.

  4. Cover and cook for 20 minutes.

  5. Uncover and brown the top.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sweet potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

  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, becoming soft and tender after boiling and baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the top brown during the final uncovered cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping and help absorb moisture from the potatoes.

The step that matters

Uncover and brown the top. Baking covered traps steam, keeping the top pale and soft. Removing the cover lets moisture escape so the crumbs and butter can toast and turn golden.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread. 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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