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Another Way to Make Potato Cheese Cakes

A baked dish of mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, lemon, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Potato Cheese 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.

Make the batter

  1. Pound the potatoes in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Mix in the butter, sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, beaten eggs, and brandy until well combined.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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 + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, giving the cakes a soft, moist crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set as it heats, holding the cakes together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Eggs set as they heat and sugar browns quickly near the end of baking. Overbaking dries the potato and egg mixture and hardens its texture, so watch for colour rather than running the full time.

Swap the potato

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

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

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