Name: Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients: 2 cups boiled and sliced sweet potatoes; 1 cup sugar; 1/2 cup butter; 1/2 cup water; Nutmeg to taste; Pie crust

Why it works: Sweet potato and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 414 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Line a deep pie pan with pie crust.

Assemble and bake

Arrange the sliced sweet potatoes in layers in the pie pan.
Add butter, sugar, water, and nutmeg over the potatoes.
Cover with pastry and bake until golden brown.
Serve warm.

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.

Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together23,364 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Sweet potatoes: Form the bulk of the filling and set into a soft, tender texture as they bake.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, mellow mouthfeel.
Water: Adds moisture that helps the sugar dissolve and the potatoes soften in the oven.

“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.