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Potato Cake

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

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

Make the dough

  1. Crush cold boiled potatoes with butter and coarse sea salt.

  2. Mix in a small amount of flour and optional yeast.

  3. Add milk to form a very firm dough.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll out the dough to 1.5 to 2 inches thick.

  2. Cut out the dough to fit your greased frying pan.

  3. Flour the surface of the cake and place it in the pan.

  4. Bake covered with a plate, shaking occasionally to prevent burning.

  5. When half done, turn the cake 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 bulk and starch that hold the cake together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Flour
Adds structure so the firm dough holds its shape while cooking.
Milk
Moistens the mixture so the flour and potato bind into a dough.
Yeast
Optional leavening that can make the cake rise slightly.

The step that matters

Shaking the cake while it bakes under the plate. Shaking helps keep the cake from sticking and scorching on the bottom of the pan. Turning it halfway lets both sides cook evenly.

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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