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Dessert

Glaced Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes glazed with sugar syrup and butter, baked until caramelized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Glaced 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 and peel the sweet potatoes.

  2. Cook the potatoes in boiling water for 30 minutes, then drain.

  3. Cut the potatoes in half lengthwise and place them in a buttered pan.

Make the glaze and bake

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sugar and water for 3 minutes to make a syrup, then add the butter.

  2. Brush the potatoes with the syrup and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes, basting twice with the remaining syrup.

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. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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
Provide the starchy, tender body that the glaze clings to and caramelises against.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and caramelises into a glossy, browned glaze in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the syrup, giving a smoother, glossier finish.
Water
Dissolves the sugar so it forms a syrup that can be brushed on evenly.

The step that matters

Basting with the remaining syrup while baking. Brushing the potatoes with syrup during baking builds up a glossy, sticky layer as the sugar thickens and browns. Applying it too early or too thickly can cause it to burn before the potatoes are tender.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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