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Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

A baked dish of sliced sweet potatoes layered with salt, pepper, sugar, butter, and water, topped with crumbs and baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Scalloped Sweet Potatoes

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. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes into pieces less than ½ inch thick.

Assemble

  1. Pack the slices into a pudding dish, layering with salt, pepper, a little sugar, and bits of butter.

  2. Pour 4 tablespoons of boiling water with 1 teaspoon of melted butter over the potatoes.

  3. Cover the surface with fine crumbs, pepper, and salt, then dot with butter.

Bake and brown

  1. Bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, then uncover to brown.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, layered body as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface caramelise and brown.
Fine crumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp topping that browns when the dish is uncovered.

The step that matters

Uncovering to brown. Baking covered traps steam, keeping the potatoes moist and cooking them through. Uncovering lets surface moisture evaporate so the crumbs and sugars can brown; leaving the lid on too long leaves the top pale and soft.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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