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Dessert

Potato Cake

A baked loaf made from mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and spices.

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the mashed potatoes and milk, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cloves, and cinnamon.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  6. Fold in the beaten eggs, ground chocolate or walnuts.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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
Adds fat and richness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and help bind the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and a tender texture to the crumb.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Stirring only until just combined keeps the crumb tender, since overmixing makes the cake tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, potato, milk, chocolate, 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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