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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie made with mashed sweet potatoes, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet or common potatoes until soft.

  2. Remove the skins and mash the potatoes.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes with milk, melted butter, and beaten eggs.

  2. Add sugar and nutmeg to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard-like texture as they cook and bind the mixture.
Sweet or common potatoes
Provide the bulk and smooth, thick body of the pie filling.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the potato into a pourable filling.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate when heated. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it curdle or cause the custard to weep and crack.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

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

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