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Dessert

Potato Cheese-cakes

A baked cake made from mashed potatoes, currants, sugar, butter, and eggs, lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Cheese-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line pattypans with puff paste.

Make and fill

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes, currants, sugar, butter, and eggs together until well combined.

  2. Spoon the mixture into the lined pattypans.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  2. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and moisture of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set as it heats, giving it structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Puff paste
Forms a flaky, crisp case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The eggs set gradually as they heat. Underbaking leaves the filling wet and loose, while overbaking dries and toughens it. Golden brown is the visual cue that the filling has set and the crust has cooked.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, 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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