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Sweet Potatoes a LA Mode

A baked dish of sliced sweet potatoes and apples sweetened with brown sugar, seasoned with salt and pepper, and topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes a LA Mode

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble

  1. In a buttered baking dish, layer sliced sweet potatoes and apples alternately.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with brown sugar.

  3. Top with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and small pieces of butter.

  4. Add a little water to prevent burning.

Bake

  1. Bake until tender.

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sweet potato + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 dish and turn tender and soft as they bake.
Apples
Add moisture and a fresh, tart note that balances the sweetness.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and caramelizes slightly on the surface as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the top brown and the flavors blend.

The step that matters

Add a little water to prevent burning. Sugar on the exposed surface can scorch before the dense sweet potato cooks through. A little water in the dish creates steam and keeps the sugars from burning while the interior softens.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sugar, pepper, 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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