Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Kentucky Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the sweet potatoes until tender.
Plunge them into cold water to easily remove the skins.
Slice the potatoes thinly.
Line 2 pie tins with biscuit dough.
Fill the pans with potato slices, adding butter, sugar, and spice between each layer.
Generously use butter.
Cover each pie with a well-perforated crust.
Bake until well done.
Serve warm; they are delicious if reheated.
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.
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Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together539 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Sweet potato + biscuittop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together21 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Biscuit + cinnamontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together312 recipes
Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
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Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,784 recipes
Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).
Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Swap the sweet potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, butter, sugar, cinnamon):
- Sweet potatothe original
- Arrowrootfits about as well
- Mustardfits less well
- Beetrootfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, butter, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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