Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet-potato Pie

A baked pie with sweet potato filling, spiced with allspice, cinnamon, and sugar, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet-potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the sweet potatoes and slice them thin.

Assemble the pie

  1. Place a layer of potatoes in a pan with a puff pastry crust.

  2. Season with allspice, cinnamon, sugar, and butter between each layer.

  3. Slice the lemon thin and add it between each layer of potatoes.

  4. Add enough water to keep the pie moist while baking.

Bake

  1. Cover the top with puff pastry and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Allspice + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Sweet potato + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, 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 bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, starchy layer as they bake.
Puff pastry crust
Provides a flaky base and top that crisps and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling caramelize and brown slightly.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the layers.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the potatoes and sugar.

The step that matters

Adding water between layers. Sweet potatoes can dry out or scorch in the oven, so enough moisture is needed to keep the filling soft while the pie bakes.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, allspice, cinnamon, 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.

More sweet potato pie recipes

Southern 5 See all 114 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes