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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie made from sweet potatoes, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil sweet potatoes until tender.

  2. Peel and mash the sweet potatoes.

  3. Strain out excess water.

Make the filling and bake

  1. Mix in milk, melted butter, beaten eggs, sugar, and spice.

  2. Pour mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

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. Milk + sweet potatotop 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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Sweet potatoes
Provide the main body and sweet flavor of the filling once mashed.
Eggs
Set the filling as they cook, giving it a firm, sliceable structure.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the mashed potato into a pourable custard.
Melted butter
Contributes richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it cracked or grainy, so look for a set center rather than a fixed time.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  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, butter, egg, sugar. 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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