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Dessert

Candied Yams

Candied Yams are sweet potatoes coated in powdered sugar and baked until caramelized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Candied Yams

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Select small sweet potatoes of uniform size.

  2. Wash and boil them in unsalted water until soft.

  3. Once cool enough to handle, scrape off the skin.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange the sweet potatoes on a baking pan about an inch apart.

  2. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and brown in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

  3. Serve on a fancy folded napkin.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Small sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy, soft body that becomes tender when boiled and sweet when browned.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the surface and melts and browns in the oven to form a candied glaze.

The step that matters

Browning in the slow oven. Powdered sugar melts and caramelizes slowly at moderate heat. Too hot and it can scorch before the potatoes are evenly glazed, while too cool and the sugar will not brown.

“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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