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Dessert

Sweet Potato Pie

A baked pie with sweet potato filling, spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and sweetened with sugar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil or steam the sweet potatoes until soft.

  2. In a pot, combine water, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; bring to a boil.

  3. Cream together sugar, butter, and corn starch until smooth.

  4. Stir the creamed mixture into the spiced water until it thickens.

  5. Line a pie pan with pastry and glaze with egg white.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the crust with skinned and thinly sliced sweet potatoes.

  2. Pour the thickened syrup over the sweet potatoes.

  3. Cover with a top crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  4. If it browns too quickly, cover with paper.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sweet potato + cinnamontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together539 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, starchy body of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the creamed mixture.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown during baking.
Corn starch
Thickens the spiced syrup so the filling sets rather than running.
Egg white
Glazes the pastry, helping it brown and seal.

The step that matters

Stir the creamed mixture into the spiced water until it thickens. Corn starch thickens only when the mixture reaches a boil and is stirred constantly. Adding it too fast or stopping early can leave lumps or a runny filling that will not set properly after baking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Sweet potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits less well
  4. Parsnipfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, sugar, butter, corn, egg. 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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