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Baked Sweet Potatoes with Ginger and Honey

"Fresh ginger, cardamom, and sweet potatoes will fill your house with a fall fragrance as well as call your family to the table."

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Why it works: Sweet potato and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 306 recipes mention both. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

The recipe

12 servings
Prep15 min
Cook40 min

Ingredients

Contains: tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and line one or two large rimmed baking sheets with parchment or lightly grease them.

  2. Place the cubed sweet potatoes in a large bowl, add the walnut oil, ground cardamom and ground black pepper, and toss until evenly coated.

  3. Spread the potatoes in a single layer across the baking sheets, using two sheets if needed so they are not crowded.

  4. Roast for 20 minutes while you prepare the glaze.

  5. In a small bowl, stir the honey and grated fresh ginger together until smooth.

  6. Remove the potatoes from the oven, drizzle the honey and ginger mixture over them, and gently toss to coat.

  7. Return to the oven and roast 15 to 20 minutes more, until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork and the edges are golden.

  8. Transfer to a serving dish and serve warm.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Sweet potato + gingertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Ginger + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,114 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cardamom + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together832 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Sweet potato + cardamomtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Ginger + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,799 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, honey, ginger, cardamom, pepper):

  1. Chickpeabetter flavor fit
  2. Beansbetter flavor fit
  3. Cashew nutabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, honey, ginger, cardamom, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).