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Dessert

Sliced Sweet Potato Pie

A pie made with sliced sweet potatoes, sugar, butter, milk or cream, and pie crust, baked until golden.

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

Sliced Sweet Potato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel the sweet potatoes and bake them until tender.

  2. Once cool, slice the potatoes into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep pie pan with a pie crust.

  2. Layer the sweet potato slices in the pan, sprinkling sugar between layers until filled.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of melted butter and pour in a little milk or cream.

  4. Cover with a top crust and bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

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

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy, soft body of the filling that sets as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother, more tender texture.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and loosens the filling so it bakes creamy.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and gives the pie its structure and crisp edges.

The step that matters

Let the potatoes cool before slicing. Hot sweet potatoes are soft and crumble easily, so cooling lets them hold clean slices that layer neatly and keep the filling from turning mushy.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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.

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