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Dessert

Candied Sweet Potato

A baked sweet potato dish glazed with butter, sugar, nutmeg, water, and finished with heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Candied Sweet Potato

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

  1. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes into ½ inch slices.

  2. Lay the slices in a deep baking dish.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle with butter, sugar, nutmeg, and any other spices you prefer.

  2. Add water to the dish.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the syrup is thick and the potatoes are tender, moistening the top frequently.

  4. Pour the heavy cream over the potatoes.

  5. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown and glaze.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and thickens into a syrup as it bakes.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and creates a creamy sauce that thickens as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until the syrup is thick and the potatoes are tender. Sugar and butter concentrate into a syrup as water evaporates, and the top can scorch before the potatoes soften. Moistening the top frequently and checking tenderness helps the syrup thicken evenly without burning.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, 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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