Name: Sweet Potatoes, Roast
Ingredients: sweet potatoes; butter; flour; 1 egg; coarse sea salt; breadcrumbs; hot fat for frying; sugar; ground cinnamon

Why it works: Sweet potato and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 539 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes, Roast

Ingredients

Directions

Boil and mash the sweet potatoes.
Add butter, flour, egg, and salt; mix well.
Form the mixture into small round flat cakes.
Coat each cake with egg and breadcrumbs.
Fry in hot fat until nicely browned, about 4-5 minutes.
Drain well and serve with sugar and ground cinnamon.

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 + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together539 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together627 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the sweet potato

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

Sweet potatothe original
Arrowrootfits about as well
Chivefits less well
Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.