Name: Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients: 3 large sweet potatoes; 2 cups sweet preserves; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup butter; 1 teaspoon ground cloves; 1 teaspoon allspice; a little nutmeg; pie crust for topping

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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

Boil the sweet potatoes until tender.
Peel and slice the sweet potatoes thinly.
In a bowl, combine the sweet potatoes, sweet preserves, sugar, butter, ground cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. Mix well and pour into a pie dish.

Bake

Cover with a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden 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.

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.

Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,874 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Sweet potato + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together105 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

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 filling and give it a soft, tender body.
Sweet preserves: Add sweetness and moisture, helping bind the filling together.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown at the edges as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

Swap the sweet potato

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

Shallotfits about as well
Parsnipfits about as well
Sweet potatothe original
Arrowrootfits about as well

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