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Potato Cake

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, sugar, eggs, spices, and rose water, coated in grated bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the potatoes

  1. Roast the potatoes in the ashes until done, then peel them.

  2. In a pan, combine the potatoes with salt and grated lemon rind.

  3. Add butter (or cream) and sugar, then mash the mixture.

  4. Rub the mixture through a colander and stir it well.

  5. Set aside to cool.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and gradually stir them into the cooled mixture.

  2. Season with mixed spice and rose water.

Bake

  1. Butter a mold or deep dish and coat the inside with grated bread.

  2. Pour in the mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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, giving it a soft, starchy body once mashed.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during baking to give the cake structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture and carrying flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly in the oven.
Cream
Can replace butter, adding moisture and a tender, rich texture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs stirred into hot potato can scramble unevenly, leaving lumps and a grainy texture instead of a smooth, set custard-like crumb.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, butter, sugar, egg, rose, 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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