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Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, milk, mashed potatoes, walnuts, chocolate, eggs, spices, vanilla, baking powder, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,147 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Potato Cake

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk, mashed potatoes, walnuts, and melted chocolate, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the cinnamon, cloves, allspice, vanilla, and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with butter for airy texture and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, helping the cake stay soft and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour. Once flour is added, gluten begins to develop. Mixing only until just combined keeps the cake tender instead of tough and dense.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, walnut, chocolate, egg, cinnamon. 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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