Why it works: Sweet potato and apple work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 133 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓
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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Prepare a rich pie crust and place it in a pie dish.
Assemble and bake
Layer slices of boiled sweet potato and thin slices of mellow apple in the crust.
Spread a thick layer of sugar and butter over the top.
Cover with another crust and bake until golden brown.
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.
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Sweet potato + appletop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together133 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,151 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 potato
- Forms the bulk of the filling, giving body and a soft, starchy texture.
- Apple
- Adds moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the filling and helps the top crust brown during baking.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat, contributing flavor and a tender texture.
- Rich pie crust
- Encloses the filling and provides a flaky, golden structure.
The step that matters
Cover with another crust and bake until golden brown. The filling must cook through while the crust browns. Baking too briefly leaves starch in the sweet potato ungelatinized and a raw, pasty filling, while over-baking dries the filling and burns the sugar.
Swap the sweet potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, butter):
- Sweet potatothe original
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Parsnipfits about as well
- Potatofits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, butter. 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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