Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Candy

A sweet treat made from mashed potatoes, confectioner's sugar, nuts, and optional chocolate coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,404 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Candy

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Bake the potatoes until tender.

  2. Scrape out the insides and mash them finely.

  3. Quickly add enough confectioner's sugar to form a dough.

  4. Stir in your desired amount of nut meats.

Shape and finish

  1. Shape the mixture into tiny balls or pats.

  2. Place on buttered paper to cool.

  3. Let them cool; they are delicious.

  4. For chocolate creams, dip the candies in melted Baker's chocolate.

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Potato + chocolatetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together220 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Meat + chocolatetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together209 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the moist, starchy base that binds the sugar into a soft, pliable dough.
Confectioner's sugar
Adds sweetness and stiffens the mashed potato into a workable dough.
Nut meats
Add texture and a toasty, rich flavor to the soft candy.
Baker's chocolate
Forms a firm, bittersweet coating around the candies for chocolate creams.

The step that matters

Add the confectioner's sugar quickly. Sugar dissolves into warm, moist potato and stiffens it fast. If the potato is still hot or the sugar is added slowly, the mixture can turn sticky and loose, making it hard to shape into balls or pats.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, meat, chocolate):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, meat, chocolate. 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

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipes