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Dessert

Potato Cheese Cake

A baked cake made from mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, currants, peel, eggs, and pastry lining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cheese Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line some patty pans with good pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, currants, and peel together.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs last and mix well.

  3. Fill the patty pans with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  2. Serve hot or cold.

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. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (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 filling, giving a soft, moist, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing moisture and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set during baking to give it structure.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweet, chewy fruit throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Add the well-beaten eggs last and mix well. Eggs are added at the end so the mixture is not overworked or overmixed. Thorough mixing distributes the eggs evenly so they set uniformly during baking, giving a consistent structure rather than pockets of uneven texture.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, currant, egg. 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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