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Dessert

Sweet Potatoes

Baked sweet potatoes topped with butter, brown sugar, water, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Sweet potato and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 314 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Slice the cold, boiled sweet potatoes and place them in a baking dish.

  2. Cover generously with butter, brown sugar, a little water, and lemon juice.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned, then turn the potatoes to the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve in the same dish when nicely browned.

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 dish, softening further in the oven while absorbing the glaze.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown and carrying flavour through the dish.
Brown sugar
Caramelises in the oven, adding sweetness and deep colour to the browned surface.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the sugar and potatoes.

The step that matters

Bake until nicely browned. Sugar caramelises and browns only with enough heat and time. Pulling the dish too early leaves the sugar syrupy and pale rather than richly glazed, while longer baking can scorch the sugar before the potatoes heat through.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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

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