Skip to main content
Dessert

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Candied sweet potatoes are baked sweet potatoes coated with sugar and flour, finished in butter and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sweet potato and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the sweet potatoes in half.

  2. Dredge the potatoes in equal parts of sugar and flour, and add salt.

Bake

  1. Place the potatoes in a baking pan with melted butter and water.

  2. Bake on a grate until both sides are a rich brown, about 30 to 45 minutes.

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. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Jersey sweet potatoes
Provide the soft, starchy body that becomes tender and sweet as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and caramelizes into a glossy, browned coating.
Flour
Coats the potatoes so the sugar and butter cling to the surface.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the surface brown evenly in the oven.

The step that matters

Judge the browning, not just the clock. Sugar darkens quickly and can scorch, while the potato interior is still softening. Watch for a rich brown on both sides, since ovens vary and the coating may color faster than the potato cooks through.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

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

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesSweet Corn PuddingSweet Corn Pudding8 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes