Skip to main content
Dessert

Puree of Sweet Potatoes

A smooth puree made from boiled sweet potatoes, butter, milk or cream, and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Puree of Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puree

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until soft.

  2. Remove the skins and pass the potatoes through a ricer.

  3. Add butter and enough hot milk or cream to moisten.

Finish and shape

  1. Season with salt and beat until light and fluffy.

  2. Shape the puree using a pastry bag and rose tube.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  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 main bulk and sweet, earthy flavor of the puree.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Hot milk or cream
Moistens the potatoes so they become smooth and easy to beat.

The step that matters

Beat until light and fluffy. Beating incorporates air into the warm, moistened puree, lightening its texture. Overbeating a starchy mash can make it gluey, so stop once it is light and holds its shape.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk. 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.

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesSweet Corn PuddingSweet Corn Pudding8 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes