Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Potato Puree Baked

A baked sweet potato puree topped with buttered egg crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Puree Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the puree

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake the sweet potatoes for about 1 hour, squeezing them with a cloth until perfectly soft.

  3. Peel the sweet potatoes and mash them through a colander.

  4. Add the butter, enough milk to achieve a soft dough consistency, and salt.

Shape and bake

  1. Butter a pie plate or sheet of tin and arrange the puree in a neat mound.

  2. Beat the egg slightly and brush it over the puree.

  3. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes until a good brown crust forms on top.

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

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

  2. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,491 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the main body of the puree, providing starch, moisture and sweetness when baked soft.
Egg
Brushed on top, it helps the crust set and promotes browning in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer flavour and a softer, smoother texture in the puree.
Milk
Loosens the mashed sweet potato to a soft dough-like consistency that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Mashing to a soft, smooth puree. Sweet potatoes must be baked until fully soft, or the mash stays lumpy and fibrous and cannot form a smooth dough-like mound. Adding milk gradually helps reach the right consistency without making it runny.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, 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.

You might also like

Sweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesRoasted Sweet PotatoesRoasted Sweet Potatoes62 recipes