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Sweet Potatoes Au Gratin

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potatoes Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes, then peel and slice them while hot.

  2. Butter a deep dish generously.

  3. Layer the sliced potatoes in the dish, sprinkling with sugar, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and dotting with butter.

  4. Add a layer of fine bread crumbs, seasoning similarly but without sugar.

  5. Top with a final layer of bread crumbs, well buttered.

  6. Pour in ¼ cup of warm water to create steam, then cover tightly.

  7. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

  8. Uncover and brown the top before serving.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  3. Sweet potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

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

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, sugar, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatothe original
  4. Tomatofits about as well

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

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