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Dessert

Potato Pone

A sweet potato cake baked with butter, eggs, and syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and flour work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Pone

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).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated sweet potato, butter or drippings, baking soda, eggs, water, and syrup.

  2. Add flour gradually until the batter is like cake batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a deep pan.

  2. Bake until set and let cool in the oven.

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. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Syrup + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Sweet potato
Provides the bulk and moist, starchy body of the pone.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm as it bakes.
Butter or drippings
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to lift it and lighten the texture.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning in the oven.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so it sets rather than staying loose.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Flour should be added a little at a time so the batter reaches a cake-batter consistency without lumps or becoming too stiff. Too much flour at once makes the texture dense and uneven after baking.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, syrup, flour. 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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