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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Sweet potato croquettes are fried potato cakes seasoned with salt, pepper, cream, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and boil the sweet potatoes in their jackets until tender.

  2. Drain, remove the skins, and wash the potatoes again.

Shape and season

  1. Season the potatoes with coarse sea salt, black pepper, cream, and a dash of cinnamon.

  2. Shape the mixture into cone shapes.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Serve on a garnished platter.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sweet potato + creamtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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, soft base that holds the croquette's shape and body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the mashed mixture softer and easier to shape.
Oil for frying
Conducts heat to brown the outside quickly while the inside stays moist.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the potatoes before seasoning. Excess water left in boiled potatoes dilutes the mixture and makes it loose, so the croquettes may not hold their cone shape or may splatter and brown unevenly in hot oil.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, cinnamon. 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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