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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with sweet potato filling, milk, eggs, sugar, cornstarch, butter, and salt, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

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 the filling

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

  2. Pass the baked sweet potato through a colander.

  3. In a bowl, mix the sweet potato with milk, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, butter, and salt.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then spread over the top of the pie.

  3. Return the pie to the oven and bake until the top is 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Baked sweet potato
Provides the bulk and body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard filling as they set when heated.
Milk
Adds liquid and creaminess to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown on top.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when sliced.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Egg yolks must be heated enough to thicken the filling, but overbaking can cause curdling, weeping, or a cracked surface. Bake until the centre just wobbles slightly and firms as it cools.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, 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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