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Potato Cake

A baked dish made from boiled potatoes, butter, salt, flour, yeast, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the dough

  1. Crush the cold boiled potatoes in a bowl.

  2. Add butter and salt, mixing well.

  3. If using, mix in flour and yeast.

  4. Gradually add milk until the mixture forms a very firm dough.

  5. Roll out the dough to 1½ to 2 inches thick.

  6. Cut the dough into circles the size of your frying pan.

Cook

  1. Grease the frying pan and place the dough circles inside.

  2. Flour the top of the dough circles.

  3. Cover with a plate and bake, shaking occasionally to prevent burning.

  4. When half done, turn the cakes over and cover with the plate again.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the starchy base that binds into a soft, tender cake.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Adds structure and helps the dough hold its shape while cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture so the potatoes and flour form a cohesive dough.
Yeast
Produces gas that gives the cakes some rise and lightness.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk until the mixture forms a very firm dough.. Adding milk slowly lets you stop once the dough holds together. Too much liquid makes it sticky and hard to shape, while too little leaves it crumbly.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. 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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