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Sweet Potato Fritters

Fried cakes made from mashed sweet potatoes, butter, flour, egg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare, boil, and mash the sweet potatoes.

  2. Add the butter, flour, egg, and salt to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Form the mixture into small round flat cakes.

  4. Coat each cake with egg and breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat (400°F/200°C) until nicely browned, about 4-5 minutes.

  2. Drain well and serve with sugar and ground cinnamon.

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 + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 fritter and give it a soft, moist interior.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to flavour and a tender texture.
Flour
Helps bind the mashed potato so the cakes hold their shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture and, in the coating, helps breadcrumbs adhere.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until nicely browned. Fat that is hot enough sets the breadcrumb coating quickly and browns it, so the cakes crisp outside before the interior absorbs much oil. Fat that is too cool makes the fritters greasy and soft.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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