Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Fudge

A sweet treat made from mashed potato, cocoa, butter, vanilla, salt, and confectioner's sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cocoa and vanilla work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 357 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Potato Fudge

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fudge

  1. Mash the potato and mix in cocoa, butter, vanilla, and salt.

  2. Stir in confectioner's sugar until the mixture is thick.

  3. Turn out onto a sugared surface and knead in more sugar until it can be easily broken off.

Shape and finish

  1. Pat or roll out to ½-inch thick and cut into squares.

  2. Add nuts if desired.

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. Cocoa + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together357 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Potato + cocoatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Potato
Adds moisture and body, giving the fudge a soft, creamy texture.
Cocoa
Provides chocolate flavor and color.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Confectioner's sugar
Sweetens and firms the mixture as it is kneaded into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Kneading in the sugar. Sugar must be added gradually until the mixture stops being sticky and can be broken off cleanly. Adding too little leaves the fudge soft and sticky, while adding too much makes it dry and crumbly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cocoa, butter, vanilla, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cocoa, butter, vanilla, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesCoconut PuddingCoconut Pudding26 recipes