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Dessert

Potato Cake

A baked cake made with mashed potatoes, chocolate, walnuts, spices, and a sweet batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar and butter until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs, flour, and sweet milk, and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the warm mashed potatoes and melted chocolate.

  5. Add the potato‑chocolate mixture to the batter.

  6. Stir in the spices and walnuts until evenly distributed.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30–35 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. 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 sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture so the cake stays soft and moist.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises.
Chocolate
Adds deep flavour and a rich, dark colour to the cake.

The step that matters

Combining the warm potato and melted chocolate into the batter. Mixing the potato-chocolate blend in gently keeps the batter smooth and evenly textured. Overmixing after the flour goes in develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the potato

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