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Fried Sweet Potatoes

Fried sweet potatoes are sliced sweet potatoes fried in lard and butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Fried Sweet Potatoes

Why it works: Sweet potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,015 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Peel and slice the sweet potatoes.

  2. Heat lard and butter in a pan.

  3. Fry the sweet potato slices until light brown.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and a little sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the fries, becoming soft inside while the outside browns.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and a crisp, golden surface.
Butter
Adds milk solids that brown and contribute a nutty, savory aroma to the fries.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown more deeply during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the sweet potato slices until light brown. Frying at the right heat lets the outside crisp and brown before the inside turns mushy. Sugar in the potato browns quickly, so the slices can scorch if the heat is too high.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

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