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Dessert

Sweet Potato Tarts

Sweet potato tarts are baked pastries made with mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, butter, sugar, milk, salt, and nutmeg or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Tarts

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  2. Gradually add the mashed sweet potatoes, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then stir them into the potato mixture.

  4. Add nutmeg or cinnamon to taste.

Bake

  1. Line pie pans with crust, fill with the mixture, and bake like pumpkin pie.

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. Sweet potato + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together414 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

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

  3. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a firm custard when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps create a creamy texture when beaten with butter.
Sweet potatoes
Provide the main body, moisture and sweet flavour of the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs in gently after the potato mixture is smooth. Eggs set into a custard when heated, so overbeating them or adding them to a lumpy base can leave an uneven texture. Combining them evenly keeps the filling smooth and helps it set uniformly in the oven.

Swap the sweet potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sugar, milk, nutmeg. 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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