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Sweet Potatoes Southern Style

A baked sweet potato casserole with layers of butter, sugar, salt, and water, finished with fried onion and beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 960 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes Southern Style

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes a day before.

  2. Peel and slice the boiled sweet potatoes thick.

Layer and bake

  1. In a baking dish, place bits of butter, sprinkle sugar, and add a layer of potatoes.

  2. Repeat layers of butter, sugar, salt, and potatoes until the dish is full.

  3. Top with more bits of butter and sugar, then pour ½ cup of water over it.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven. Moisten the top with butter and water once or twice as it cooks.

Add onion and eggs

  1. Fry sliced onion in 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Fill the pan with cold sliced potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and pour beaten eggs over to cover.

  3. Bake until done.

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 + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together960 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and become soft and tender as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the potatoes as it melts in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it caramelises.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the potato layers into a firm custard-like dish.

The step that matters

Bake until done. Eggs set through heat and the dish can turn watery or curdle if undercooked or overbaked. Doneness is best judged by a firm set centre rather than time alone.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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