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Dessert

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Candied Sweet Potatoes are boiled potatoes sweetened with sugar and butter, then baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Candied Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and cut them in half lengthwise.

  2. Boil the potatoes until tender.

Make the candied glaze

  1. Add sugar and butter to the potatoes.

  2. Cook until the syrup is thick.

Brown and serve

  1. Brown the potatoes in the oven.

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the starchy base that softens when boiled and holds the sweet glaze.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and thickens into a syrup that coats the potatoes as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the syrup become glossy and smooth.

The step that matters

Cook until the syrup is thick. Sugar and butter must reduce long enough to thicken into a syrup. If undercooked, the glaze stays thin and runs off; if overcooked, it can harden or turn bitter as the sugar caramelises.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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