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Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Sweet potatoes glazed with a sugar‑butter syrup after parboiling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sweet potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the sweet potatoes.

  2. Parboil the sweet potatoes for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the sweet potatoes.

  4. Cut the sweet potatoes in half lengthwise.

  5. Place the sweet potatoes in a buttered baking pan.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the butter to the syrup.

Glaze and bake

  1. Pour half of the syrup over the sweet potatoes.

  2. Bake the sweet potatoes until soft, about 15 minutes.

  3. Baste the sweet potatoes twice with the remaining syrup.

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. Sugar + sweet potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + sweet potatotop 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 dish, becoming soft and tender when parboiled and baked.
Sugar
Dissolves into the boiled water to form the syrup that sweetens and glazes the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the syrup, giving the glaze a smooth, rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Basting with the remaining syrup. Syrup that reaches the surface during baking caramelizes and thickens into a glaze as water evaporates. Basting twice keeps the surface coated so it browns and sets evenly rather than drying or burning.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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