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Dessert

Potato Cheese Cakes

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with lemon peel, sugar, butter, and cream, formed into cakes and topped with loaf sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Cheese Cakes

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the mashed potatoes, lemon peel, sugar, and butter until smooth.

  3. Add enough cream to achieve a creamy consistency.

Assemble

  1. Roll out puff pastry and cut into rounds.

  2. Place a spoonful of the potato mixture on each round and fold over.

  3. Seal the edges and place on a baking sheet.

  4. Sprinkle loaf sugar over the tops before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the filling and give it a soft, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture in the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pastry tops brown in the oven.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and flavour to the potato filling.
Cream
Adds moisture so the potato mixture becomes creamy and spreadable.

The step that matters

Seal the edges well. Sealing traps the filling inside the pastry. If the edges open, the moist filling can leak onto the baking sheet and scorch while the pastry stays pale.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, sugar, butter, cream. 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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