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Drink

Sweet Potato Coffee

A beverage made by roasting sweet potatoes, grinding them, and mixing with water and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 Potato Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and roast

  1. Wash, peel, slice, and dry the sweet potatoes.

  2. Roast the sweet potatoes until very dark brown.

Brew and sweeten

  1. Grind the roasted sweet potatoes and add two heaping tablespoons to each cup of water.

  2. Boil for ten minutes.

  3. Sweeten with brown sugar 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. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 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
Roasting browns their starches and sugars, creating the coffee-like flavor and color of the drink.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a molasses note that balances the roasted bitterness.

The step that matters

Roast until very dark brown. Heat browns the starches and sugars through Maillard reactions and caramelization, which build the coffee-like flavor. Pale potatoes taste flat and starchy, while overly burnt ones turn bitter.

“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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