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Browned Sweet Potatoes

A dish of sweet potatoes browned in frying fat with a sweet and savory sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Browned Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut the sweet potatoes in halves.

  2. Heat the frying fat in a skillet and add the potatoes.

  3. Pour in the water and season with salt and pepper.

Cook and brown

  1. Cook until tender, then remove the cover and let brown.

  2. Transfer the potatoes to a dish.

  3. In the skillet, add sugar, flour, and a little water; let it boil once or twice.

  4. Pour the mixture over the potatoes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender interior when cooked.
Frying fat
Conducts heat to brown the potato surfaces and adds richness.
Sugar
Caramelises in the hot fat to add sweetness and deepen browning.
Flour
Thickens the boiled pan liquid so the glaze clings to the potatoes.

The step that matters

Letting the potatoes brown after removing the cover. Browning depends on dry, hot surface contact with the fat. Leaving the cover on traps steam and keeps the surfaces pale and soft, so the potatoes need uncovered cooking once they are tender.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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