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Sweet Potato Croquettes

A fried snack made from mashed sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Sweet Potato Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil, peel, and mash the sweet potatoes.

  2. Season with salt, butter, sugar, and pepper.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then mold into croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each croquette into the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Sweet potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 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

Sweet potatoes
Form the soft, starchy base that holds the croquette together and gives it body.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a softer, more tender texture in the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown when fried.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere and form a crisp shell.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before shaping. A warm, soft mash is too loose to hold its shape and can slump or tear during coating. Cooling firms the starch so the croquettes keep their form in the hot oil.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

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