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Dessert

Indian Cake

A yeast-leavened cornmeal cake with grated potato and raisins, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Indian 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.

Make the batter

  1. Combine yellow cornmeal and milk in a bowl until wet.

  2. Add grated potato and sugar, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the yeast and let the mixture rise.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into small, round pans, indenting it deeply.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Allow to cool before serving.

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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Potato + raisintop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cake, giving it its structure and coarse texture.
Milk
Moistens the cornmeal so it forms a batter and adds softness to the crumb.
Grated potato
Adds moisture and helps keep the cake tender after baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps with browning during baking.
Active dry yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, causing the batter to rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Letting the batter rise. Yeast needs time to ferment and produce gas; if the batter does not rise adequately, the cake will be dense. Rising time is not specified in the record, so watch for visible expansion before baking.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, raisin. 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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