Name: Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients: firm sweet potatoes; sugar; butter; brandy; cloves; lemon juice; water; pie crust

Why it works: Sweet potato and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 228 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the sweet potatoes and let them cool with the skins on.
Peel and slice the potatoes crosswise.
Line a pie dish with a good crust.
Layer sliced potatoes in the dish, sprinkling with sugar and adding bits of butter.
Add 1 teaspoon of brandy and 5 cloves to each layer, along with a dozen drops of lemon juice.
Repeat layering until the dish is full.
Add 2 tablespoons of water and cover with pastry.
Cut a slit in the top and bake until golden.
Serve cold with powdered sugar on top and good cheese.

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.

Sweet potato + clovetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together228 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,150 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together314 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Brandy + clovetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,362 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Swap the clove

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Gingerfits better
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, sugar, butter, brandy, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.