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Dessert

Creamed Sweet-potatoes

A creamy sweet potato dish made by boiling, thickening with flour, and seasoning with butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Creamed Sweet-potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then drain all the water.

  2. Add enough milk to create a gravy consistency.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Stir in a good-sized piece of butter and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt and pepper to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 creamy base of the dish once boiled and mashed.
Milk
Loosens the mash into a smooth, gravy-like consistency.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the mixture holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that complements the potatoes.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred in evenly so it can swell and gelatinize in the liquid; added in clumps or without enough heat and stirring, it leaves lumps or a raw starchy taste.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Arrowrootfits about as well

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