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Fricasseed Sweet Potatoes

A sweet potato dish simmered with butter, brown sugar, and salt until tender and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fricasseed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare the sweet potatoes and place them in cold water to prevent browning.

Cook and brown

  1. In a pot, combine the potatoes, brown sugar, salt, and water.

  2. Cover and cook until fork-tender.

  3. Add the butter and cook on low heat until they brown slowly, about 1 hour.

  4. If there's excess water, remove the cover and let it simmer until dry.

  5. Stir occasionally to brown evenly.

  6. If they dry out before tender, add a little hot water.

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).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the dish's main body, becoming tender as they cook through and soften in the liquid.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the potato surfaces caramelize and brown during slow cooking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the potatoes brown slowly and evenly in the pot.

The step that matters

Browning on low heat after the potatoes are tender. Sugar caramelizes only when the surface is dry and moderately hot. Excess water must evaporate first, so keep the heat low and stir occasionally to avoid scorching while the sugars brown slowly.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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