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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A custard pie made with sweet potatoes, butter, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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

Prepare the filling

  1. Parboil the sweet potatoes and grate them when cold.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the mixture.

  4. Gradually beat in the grated sweet potatoes until the mixture is light.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Top with the beaten egg whites and sugar, then bake.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and moisture that give the pie its soft, dense body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the creamed mixture hold air when beaten.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the filling, while beaten whites add lightness and help it set.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air that gives the filling lift. Stirring them in vigorously knocks out that air, leaving a denser pie, so fold gently with a spatula until just combined.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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