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Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, mashed potatoes, sweet milk, melted chocolate, flour, spices, vanilla, lemon extract, and nuts.

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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the mashed potatoes and sweet milk.

  4. Add the melted chocolate and mix until combined.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and spices.

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

  7. Fold in the vanilla, lemon extract, and chopped nuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted in the center 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for aeration and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become airy.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and softness, helping the cake stay tender.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense. Stop stirring as soon as no dry streaks remain.

Swap the potato

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

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

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