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Dessert

Caramel Cake, Potato

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Caramel Cake, Potato

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and granulated sugar together.

  2. Add the mashed potatoes, beaten eggs, and sweet milk, and mix well.

  3. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then add them to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the melted chocolate, chopped walnuts, raisins, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf tin.

  2. Cover the loaf tin with brown paper for the first 15 minutes.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 50 to 60 minutes without moving the cake.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake richness and a tender crumb.
Granulated sugar
Creamed with the butter to add sweetness and help browning.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, keeping the cake soft and moist.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Leave the cake undisturbed while baking. The batter's structure is still setting in the oven, so moving the loaf tin can cause the rising cake to sink or become dense.

Swap the potato

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

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

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