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Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet potato cake made with powdered sugar, vanilla or lemon flavor, egg whites, and topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato 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.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the potatoes as directed in recipe No. 1185.

  2. Add powdered sugar and vanilla or lemon flavor to taste, instead of seasoning with salt.

Mix and bake

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  3. Sprinkle the top with bread crumbs.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the cake and give it a moist, tender body.
Egg whites
Beaten into the mixture to add air and lift, giving the cake a lighter structure.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and mellows the flavor of the potatoes.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air when beaten, and that air lifts the cake. Folding gently after the mixture has cooled keeps the foam from collapsing, so the cake stays light rather than dense.

Swap the potato

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

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

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