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Dessert

Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes are boiled, then caramelized in butter and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the sweet potatoes and boil them in just enough water until tender.

Caramelize and serve

  1. In a skillet, heat the butter until hot.

  2. Add the sweet potatoes in layers and cook until they are a rich brown.

  3. Sprinkle with sugar just before serving.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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 starchy, tender body of the dish that browns on the outside.
Butter
Conducts heat to the potatoes and helps their surfaces brown richly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface caramelize as it browns.

The step that matters

Cook the layered sweet potatoes until a rich brown. Browning depends on sugars in the potato surface caramelizing in hot butter. If the heat is too low the potatoes steam instead of browning, and if it is too high the outside can burn before the inside warms. Cook until the color deepens, turning as needed.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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