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Dessert

Sweet Potato Cakes — Very Nice

A baked sweet potato cake made with mashed sweet potatoes, flour, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Cakes — Very Nice

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Remove the skin from the sweet potatoes and mash them well.

  2. Mix in the flour, salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Add enough warm milk to form a good dough.

  4. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into cakes the size of your baking tin.

Bake

  1. Butter the baking tin and sprinkle a little flour over it.

  2. Place the cakes in the tin and bake until nearly done, then turn them over.

  3. If the bottom of the oven is very hot, place a grate under the baking tin.

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

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

  2. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sweet potato + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the bulk and moisture of the dough, along with a soft, starchy body.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and gives the mashed potato mixture enough structure to hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and helps the cakes brown in the tin.
Milk
Hydrates the mixture so it comes together into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Turning the cakes. Turning them only once they are nearly done lets the first side set and firm up so it does not break, while the second side finishes and browns evenly.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, butter, milk. 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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