Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with a sweet potato filling and pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

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 the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, cream, butter, and beaten eggs.

  3. Flavor the mixture with lemon or nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the filling into the pastry shell.

  2. Bake until set and golden.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the filling, along with moisture and mild sweetness.
Eggs
Set the filling into a sliceable custard as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the filling a smoother, silkier texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it curdle or crack. Watch for a filling that is firm at the edges and only slightly wobbly in the centre.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes