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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pone

A baked sweet potato cake made with butter, sugar, nutmeg, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pone

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated sweet potato, creamed butter, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the yolks of the eggs and add them to the mixture; mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pan.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and lightly browned.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Nutmeg + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Nutmeg and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Provides the bulk and moist, starchy body that gives the pone its dense texture.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites, when folded in, help it set and lighten.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing moisture and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives lift; stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser pone. Fold gently so the batter stays light before it sets in the oven.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, egg. 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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