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Dessert

Candied Sweet Potatos

Candied sweet potatoes are boiled, baked with butter and maple syrup until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and maple syrup work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 93 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Candied Sweet Potatos

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Peel the desired number of sweet potatoes.

  2. Boil the sweet potatoes with a generous quantity of coarse sea salt until they are slightly undercooked.

Bake and serve

  1. Place them in an oven pan and add a bit of butter on each potato.

  2. Baste frequently with maple syrup.

  3. Bake in a very hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes until browned.

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 + maple syruptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Butter + maple syruptop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. 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
Provide the starchy body of the dish, which softens and becomes tender when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the potatoes brown and carrying flavor across the surface.
Maple syrup
Adds sweetness and, as it caramelizes in the oven, a glossy, browned coating.

The step that matters

Boiling until slightly undercooked. The potatoes finish cooking in the oven, so boiling them fully would leave them mushy and cause them to fall apart when basted and baked.

“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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