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Sweet Potato Croquettes

A fried snack made from mashed sweet potatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter, formed into balls and coated in batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Sweet Potato Croquettes

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 Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender.

  2. Peel and mash the sweet potatoes while they are hot.

  3. Season the mashed potatoes with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and butter.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls the size of large walnuts.

  2. Dip the balls in batter and fry them until golden 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy, sweet base that holds the croquette together once mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a smoother texture and savory depth.

The step that matters

Mash the sweet potatoes while they are hot. Hot potatoes mash more smoothly because their starch is softer and less likely to turn gluey or lumpy. Cooled potatoes firm up and become harder to shape into balls that hold together when fried.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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