Name: To Preserve Sweet Potatoes for Winter
Ingredients: sweet potatoes; boiling water; butter; sugar

Why it works: Sweet potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,151 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Preserve Sweet Potatoes for Winter

Ingredients

sweet potatoes
boiling water
butter
sugar

Directions

Boil or steam the sweet potatoes until thoroughly cooked.
Slice the potatoes and dry them by placing them near a fire or in the sun.
Store the dried potatoes in paper sacks.
For serving, place the desired amount of potatoes in a small baking dish.
Cover the potatoes with boiling water and let them sit on the stove until the water reduces and the potatoes are soft.
Add bits of butter and sugar, then place in the oven to brown.

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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sweet potato + buttertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,491 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).