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Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet potato cake with chocolate, almonds, and spices baked in a cake pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. 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 grated potatoes and milk, mixing well.

  4. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice.

Make the batter

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

  2. Melt the sweet chocolate and fold it into the batter.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Fold in the chopped almonds.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Chocolate + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,733 recipes

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  5. Potato + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together337 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, lightly aerated texture when creamed.
Grated potatoes
Add moisture and body to the batter, keeping the cake soft.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour mixture. Stirring the dry ingredients in only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cake stays tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the potato

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

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

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