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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pate

A sweet potato pate made by mashing boiled sweet potatoes with eggs, flour, and milk, then baking or frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pate

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mash the sweet boiled potatoes in a bowl.

  2. Add the eggs and flour, mixing until combined.

  3. Stir in enough sweet milk to achieve a soft consistency.

Cook

  1. Grease muffin rings.

  2. Drop the mixture into the rings.

  3. Fry on a hot griddle until brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Sweet boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk and moist, soft body of the pâté.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it cooks.
Flour
Adds body and helps hold the mixture together while frying.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture so the mixture reaches a soft consistency.

The step that matters

Frying on the hot griddle. The mixture is soft and wet, so it needs enough heat to set and brown on the outside before it spreads or sticks. Greasing the rings helps the cakes release cleanly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, 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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