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Baked Sweet Potatoes

Baked sweet potatoes are sweet potatoes baked until tender, served on a napkin, optionally topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Baked Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Sweet potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,491 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the sweet potatoes in cold water and dry them.

Bake and serve

  1. Place them in a 400°F (200°C) oven, turning occasionally for even cooking.

  2. When done, serve on a napkin.

  3. Optionally, cut off the top end, scoop out a teaspoon of the potato, and replace it with a piece of fresh butter.

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 + 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 sweet as they bake.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts into the hot potato flesh.

The step that matters

Turning occasionally in the oven. Sweet potatoes cook unevenly if left still, since the side nearest the heat source cooks faster. Turning them helps the flesh soften evenly throughout.

“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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