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Escalloped Sweet Potatoes

A baked dish of thinly sliced sweet potatoes layered with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Escalloped Sweet Potatoes

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. Slice raw sweet potatoes very thin.

  2. Butter a pudding dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Arrange a layer of sliced potato in the bottom.

  2. Sprinkle over 2 teaspoons of flour, bits of butter, and a little salt and pepper.

  3. Continue layering until the dish is filled.

  4. Pour in enough milk to moisten the whole.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 40 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Raw sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender as they bake.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a light sauce around the potato slices.
Milk
Moistens the layers and cooks into a creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Pour in enough milk to moisten the whole. Potato starch and flour need liquid to hydrate and thicken; too little milk leaves the dish dry and pasty, while the layers must be fully wetted for even cooking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, 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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