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Baked Sweet Potato Mould

A baked sweet potato dish made with mashed sweet potatoes, buttered onion, milk or cream, and seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Baked Sweet Potato Mould

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a sharp oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash, peel, and cook the sweet potatoes in water until tender.

  2. Drain and mash the potatoes until smooth.

Make the mixture

  1. In a pan, fry the minced onion in butter until golden brown.

  2. Add the potato mash and enough milk or cream to moisten.

  3. Season with salt and press the mixture into a buttered mold.

Bake

  1. Turn the mold onto a dish and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until 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.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together960 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Onion + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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 mould and give it a soft, moist texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onion brown in the pan.
Onion
Adds savoury flavour when fried until golden brown.
Milk or cream
Moistens the mash so it holds together and stays tender.

The step that matters

Bake until brown. The mould is baked after it is turned out, so it needs enough time in the oven for the surface to brown. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between sugars and proteins, which adds colour and flavour. Stop when the surface is golden, not before.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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