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Dessert

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Candied Sweet Potatoes are sweet potatoes glazed with a sugar syrup and butter, baked until caramelized.

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 ↓

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Steam the sweet potatoes until done, then peel them.

  2. Slice the sweet potatoes and place them in a baking pan.

Make the syrup

  1. In a saucepan, boil sugar and water together until it forms a syrup.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the butter while the syrup is still warm.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the syrup over the sweet potatoes and add small pieces of butter on top.

  2. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about 1½ hours, tilting the pan occasionally to pour syrup over the potatoes.

  3. Serve hot in the baking pan.

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 as they bake in the syrup.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, as it cooks, thickens the water into a syrup that glazes the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the syrup and the potatoes.

The step that matters

Boiling the sugar and water into syrup. Sugar dissolves in water and concentrates as it boils; if it is boiled too little or too long, the syrup can be too thin to glaze or can darken and turn bitter. Stirring in the butter while the syrup is warm helps it blend smoothly.

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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