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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A custard pie made with grated sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, spices, eggs, lemon, and cream baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes.

  2. Grate the sweet potatoes when cold.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg yolks, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the mixture.

  3. Gradually beat in the grated sweet potatoes until light and fluffy.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and thick cream.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy, mealy body that gives the pie its soft, sliceable texture.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and set the filling, while whipped whites add lightness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly as it bakes.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the set custard texture.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and thick cream. Egg whites hold air that gives lightness, and folding gently keeps that air in the mixture. Beating them hard would deflate the foam and leave a denser pie.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, cream. 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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