Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Cake

A chocolate cake made with mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, flour, spices, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 25 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Potato Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine one scant cup butter, two scant cups sugar, four eggs, one large cup mashed potatoes (hot), one cup melted chocolate, one-half cup milk, two cups flour, one teaspoon vanilla, one teaspoon cloves, one teaspoon cinnamon, one teaspoon nutmeg, two teaspoons baking powder, and one-half cup chopped English walnuts.

  2. Cream two cupfuls of sugar and one and one-half cupfuls of butter.

  3. Add one-half cupful of milk, four eggs, two cupfuls of flour, one cupful of mashed potatoes, two teaspoonfuls of baking powder, one teaspoonful each of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, and one cupful of chopped walnuts.

  4. Melt four cakes of chocolate and add to cake.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a bread pan and cut into squares.

  2. Bake in thin layers.

  3. Add coconut to frosting.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1212Calories
34 gProtein
39 gFat
180 gCarbs

Counts 12 of 13 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 12 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Chocolate1 oz (28g) semisweet155
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Walnut1 walnut half (4g)26
Vanilla1 tsp extract (4ml)12
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Cakenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  5. Nutmeg + walnuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and a tender, soft crumb to the cake.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps carry the flavor of the spices.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and keep moisture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Cream the sugar and butter. Beating butter with sugar traps air in the fat, which gives the cake lift and a fine, even crumb. Butter that is too warm or too cold will not hold that air well.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, milk, flour, vanilla, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, milk, flour, vanilla, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes