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Dessert

Sweet Potatoe Pie

A baked pie made with sweet potatoes, flour, sugar, butter, water, and nutmeg or allspice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoe Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Steam the sweet potatoes until soft.

  2. Slice the cooked sweet potatoes thinly.

  3. Prepare pastry as usual.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay the sliced potatoes in a deep pie pan.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the potatoes.

  3. Add sugar, butter, water, and nutmeg or allspice to taste.

  4. Bake until the pie is set.

  5. Serve warm.

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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, providing body, starch and natural sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the filling as it heats, helping it set rather than run.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a softer, silkier texture.
Water
Adds moisture so the starch can thicken the filling evenly.

The step that matters

Bake until the pie is set. Starch in the flour thickens only when heated enough, and the filling firms as it cools. Underbaking leaves a runny, soggy filling, while the pie should be judged by a set centre rather than by time alone.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, 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.

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

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