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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A pie filled with mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, cream, butter, eggs, and flavored with lemon or nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the mashed sweet potatoes, sugar, cream, butter, and beaten eggs.

  3. Flavor the mixture with lemon or nutmeg. Beat the mixture well until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the filling into pie crusts lined with good pie crust.

  2. Bake until set and lightly browned.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

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, starchy bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Set the filling into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly at the edges.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich texture and smooth mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the set custard.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until smooth. Thorough beating breaks up any lumps of mashed sweet potato and distributes the eggs evenly, so the baked filling sets smoothly rather than grainy or streaked.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, butter, egg, lemon. 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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