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Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet cake made with mashed potatoes, sugar, butter, milk, chocolate, walnuts, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk, mashed potatoes, and melted chocolate, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and spices.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  6. Fold in the chopped walnuts and eggs until fully incorporated.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30‑35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. Let cool before frosting with white or chocolate frosting.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Walnut + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and richness in the creamed base.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture to the batter, helping the cake stay soft.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and stirring only until combined keeps gluten development limited, so the cake stays tender rather than tough.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, walnut, flour, chocolate, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, walnut, flour, chocolate, egg. 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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