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Dessert

Potato Pone

A sweet potato cake made with molasses, brown sugar, butter, eggs, ginger, salt, baking soda, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Potato Pone

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine grated sweet potatoes, molasses, brown sugar, butter, beaten eggs, ginger, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Add enough water to create a soft batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into pans that are about 3 inches deep.

  2. Bake for a long time until set.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sweet potato + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,151 recipes

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 moist, starchy body of the pone.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, sliceable custard-like texture.
Molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pone brown during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for a tender crumb and flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to lighten the batter and aid rising.

The step that matters

Bake for a long time until set. The batter is wet and dense, so it needs slow, sustained heat for the eggs and starch to fully set through the thick layer. Pulling it early leaves a soggy, under-set center.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, molasses, sugar, butter, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, molasses, sugar, butter, 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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