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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie filled with sweet potato, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, lemon, and brandy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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

  1. Parboil and peel the sweet potatoes, then grate them when cold.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

Make the filling

  1. Add the egg yolks, cinnamon, nutmeg, grated sweet potatoes, lemon juice, lemon rind, and brandy to the mixture.

  2. Fold in the egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Line a large pie plate with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the mixture.

  3. 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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, giving it a dense, smooth texture once grated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender, smooth texture in the filling.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Egg whites
Folded in gently to add lift and a lighter structure to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air that gives lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, leaving a denser pie that may not rise as lightly in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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