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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pate

A sweet potato pâté made with mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, flour, and sweet milk, then fried in muffin rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pate

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the boiled mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, flour, and enough sweet milk to create a soft mixture.

  2. Grease muffin rings and drop the mixture into them.

Cook

  1. Fry on a hot griddle until brown on both sides.

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. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 main body and sweet flavor of the pâté.
Eggs
Bind the mixture so it holds its shape when fried.
Flour
Adds body and helps the mixture set firm enough to hold together.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softens the mixture to the right consistency.

The step that matters

Fry on a hot griddle until brown on both sides. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs a hot surface and dry exterior. Frying too cool a griddle leaves the pâté pale, soggy, and likely to break apart when flipped.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, 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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