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Sweet Potato Puree

A smooth puree of boiled sweet potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, and milk, optionally baked and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Puree

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the puree

  1. Mash the boiled sweet potatoes thoroughly.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Add enough hot milk to moisten the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve as you would mashed white potatoes.

  2. Alternatively, place in a pudding dish, brush the top with beaten egg, and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. Serve with tomato sauce as a luncheon dish.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Sweet potato + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 potatoes
Form the bulk of the puree and give it its body and soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Hot milk
Adds moisture so the mashed sweet potatoes become soft and spreadable.
Egg
Brushed on top, it helps the surface brown and set when baked.

The step that matters

Brush the top with beaten egg before browning. An even egg coat sets and browns the surface in the oven. Thin or patchy brushing gives uneven colour and a less cohesive top.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, milk, egg, tomato, sauce. 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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