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Dessert

Potato Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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. In a large bowl, mix together the sugar and butter until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten egg whites and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and mashed potatoes until combined.

  4. Melt the chocolate and add it to the mixture.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, walnuts, and baking powder.

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

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. 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. Milk + potatotop 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

Eggs
Whites beaten separately add lift and structure to the batter.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while creaming with butter.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and body, keeping the cake soft.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form. Overmixing toughens the batter and can make the cake dense, so stop as soon as the flour is incorporated.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, 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 sugar, butter, 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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