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Dessert

Potato Caramel Cake

A sweet cake made with mashed potatoes, sugar, butter, eggs, spices, and walnuts, finished with a powdered sugar lemon filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Potato Caramel 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 together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Stir in the hot mashed potatoes and milk.

  4. Add the cinnamon, cloves, allspice, flour, baking powder, ground walnuts, and vanilla.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in layers or as a loaf cake at 350°F (175°C).

  2. For the filling, mix powdered sugar, lemon juice, and beaten egg whites until smooth.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat, and emulsifying power that help bind the batter.
Hot mashed potatoes
Add moisture and softness, helping the cake stay tender after baking.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to add lift and a light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped egg whites, so the batter loses the lift they provide and the cake bakes up dense.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

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