Name: Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients: cold, boiled sweet potatoes; 1 tablespoon vinegar; 2 tablespoons sugar; water; butter; flour; allspice

Why it works: Sweet potato and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 105 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Slice cold, boiled sweet potatoes into thick slices.
Lay the slices in a pie plate lined with pastry.

Assemble and bake

Add vinegar and sugar.
Fill the plate with water.
Sprinkle bits of butter and a little flour on top.
Season with allspice and cover with an upper crust.
Bake until golden.

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 + allspicetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together105 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).
Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together627 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,302 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,548 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 filling and set into a soft, tender body when baked.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown at the edges.
Vinegar: Adds a slight acidity that brightens the sweet filling.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and promotes browning in the crust.
Flour: Thickens the liquid around the potatoes so the filling holds together when cut.

Swap the allspice

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Jalapenofits better
Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, vinegar, sugar, butter, flour. 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.