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Escaloped Sweet Potatoes

A baked dish of sliced sweet potatoes layered with butter, pepper, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Escaloped Sweet Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pare the sweet potatoes and cut them into halves or slices.

  2. Place a layer of potatoes in a baking pan and add bits of butter, pepper, and a generous sprinkling of sugar.

  3. Add another layer of potatoes and seasoning, repeating until all ingredients are used.

  4. Pour enough boiling water into the pan to show through the potatoes, but do not cover them.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pan and bake for 1 hour in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  2. Remove the cover and bake for an additional 30 minutes until the top is nicely browned.

  3. Serve in the baking 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. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 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
Form the bulk of the dish, turning soft and tender as they bake through.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the top brown and the dish taste rounded.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top caramelize and brown in the oven.
Boiling water
Creates steam and moisture under the cover so the potatoes cook through without drying.

The step that matters

Covering the pan for the first hour. Keeping the lid on traps steam so the potato slices cook through evenly. Removing it too early can dry the surface before the potatoes are tender.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar. 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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