Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet cake made with boiled potato, chocolate, almonds, spices, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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 batter

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

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

  3. Add the grated potato and grated chocolate, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the mixture.

  5. Stir in the chopped almonds, cinnamon, allspice, ginger, vanilla, cloves, and grated nutmeg.

  6. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and add it to the mixture.

  7. Gradually mix in the flour until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for one hour.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Almond + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the sugar cream into the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to release gas for rising. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk spreads it evenly, so the cake rises uniformly instead of showing pockets or uneven spots.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, chocolate, egg, almond, cinnamon, allspice. 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.

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipes