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Dessert

Sweet Potatoes an Gratin

A baked gratin of sliced sweet potatoes layered with butter, salt, pepper, optional sugar, and topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes an Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil, peel, and slice sweet potatoes into ¼-inch thick slices.

Assemble

  1. Layer the slices in a buttered baking dish, seasoning each layer with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. If the potatoes are not very sweet, sprinkle a little sugar over each layer.

  3. Top with fine bread crumbs and dot with small pieces of butter.

Bake

  1. Cover and bake until heated through, then uncover and brown delicately.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

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

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 gratin and give it a soft, tender body with natural sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the dish taste full and encouraging gentle browning on top.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that contrasts with the soft potato layers below.

The step that matters

Cover and bake until heated through, then uncover and brown delicately.. Covering traps steam so the potatoes cook through gently without drying out, while uncovering at the end lets the surface brown. Browning too early or too hot can scorch the crumbs before the centre is tender.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

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