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Potato Cakes

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with butter or drippings, served with meat sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Cakes

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

  1. Prepare the potatoes as you would for pancakes.

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

  3. Grease a long cake pan with plenty of butter or drippings.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the potato mixture into the pan and spread evenly.

  2. Bake in the oven until golden brown.

  3. Serve with meat sauce.

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

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

  2. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Potatoes
Form the main body of the cake, giving it a starchy, substantial texture when baked.
Butter or drippings
Greases the pan and adds fat that helps the surface brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough lets the surface dry and brown, which gives flavor and a firm crust. Stopping early leaves the centre soft and pale.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, meat, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, sauce. 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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