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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with sweet potato, apple, raisin, currant filling, spiced with nutmeg and cinnamon, topped with butter and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

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.

Prepare

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until just over half done, then slice them thinly.

  2. Line a pie pan with the pie crust, slightly thicker than usual.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer the sliced sweet potatoes, chopped apples, raisins, and currants in the pan.

  2. Sprinkle ¾ cup sugar and bits of butter over the layers, then repeat the layering.

  3. Sprinkle nutmeg and cinnamon on top, then pour sherry wine over the filling.

Bake

  1. Cover with a top crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the filling and give it a soft, starchy body when cooked.
Apples
Add moisture and a fresh, tart note that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the texture and carries flavor.
Sherry wine
Adds moisture and a fragrant, mellow aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the sweet potatoes until just over half done. Sweet potatoes that are fully cooked before baking turn mushy and can overbake, while undercooked slices stay firm. Stopping just over halfway lets them finish softening in the oven and hold their shape in the layers.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, apple, raisin, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, apple, raisin, sugar, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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