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Dessert

Potato Cakes

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, salt, eggs, and pecan meats, formed into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, steam, and mash the potatoes.

  2. Add butter, coarse sea salt, eggs, and pecan meats.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into small cakes.

  2. Bake 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. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  3. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + meattop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that holds the cakes together and gives a soft, tender interior.
Eggs
Bind the mashed mixture so the cakes hold their shape and set when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Pecan meats
Add crunchy texture and a nutty flavor to the soft potato interior.

The step that matters

Shape the mixture into small cakes. If the mash is too wet or loose, the cakes will spread and fall apart when baked. Mashed potatoes with eggs need to be firm enough to hold a shape, so the cakes keep their form and brown evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, meat. 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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