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Dessert

Potato Pone

A baked sweet potato cake made with grated sweet potatoes, sweet milk, ginger, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Potato Pone

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Peel and grate enough sweet potatoes to fill a quart bowl, working quickly to prevent discoloration.

  2. Mix the grated sweet potatoes with sweet milk, powdered ginger, and softened butter until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and lightly browned.

  3. Serve warm.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + gingertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,519 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  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 potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that becomes the soft, sliceable body of the pone.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps the mixture bind and set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and helps with browning.
Powdered ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and flavour to the sweet potato base.

The step that matters

Work quickly when grating the sweet potatoes. Grated sweet potato darkens quickly when its cut surfaces oxidise after exposure to air. Grating and mixing promptly keeps the colour bright and the flavour fresh before baking.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, milk, butter. 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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