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Sweet Potato Soup

A soup made from sweet potato, milk, butter, and cream, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grind the sweet potato using a vegetable mill.

  2. Add just enough milk to cover the sweet potato and let it stand for 7 to 8 hours.

  3. Slightly heat the mixture (do not cook).

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in a small piece of butter and enough milk and cream to achieve the desired consistency.

  2. Serve in hot plates.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potato
Provides the main body and starchy, sweet flavour of the soup once ground.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the purée, letting it thin to the desired consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother mouthfeel and a rounder flavour.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the soup silkier and richer in texture.

The step that matters

Slightly heat the mixture (do not cook). Gentle warming keeps the soup from boiling, since high heat can cause milk proteins to scorch or curdle and dull the fresh, sweet flavour of the sweet potato.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, cream. 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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