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Dessert

Sweet Potato Tarts

A baked tart with sweet potato, eggs, butter, sugar, brandy, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and sweet potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil and mash the sweet potatoes with a pinch of salt and enough milk to make it moist.

  2. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs, brandy, and spices to the butter mixture and mix well.

  4. Fold in the mashed sweet potatoes until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into tart shells and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Nutmeg + sweet potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Brandy + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. 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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a firm custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Beaten with sugar to trap air, adding richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it cream with the butter.
Sweet potatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and mild sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into tart shells and bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, so the filling sets properly only when baked until just firm. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it dry and cracked.

Swap the sweet potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, brandy, nutmeg, milk):

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Shallotfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, brandy, nutmeg, 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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