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Dessert

American Potato Cake

A baked cake made from sliced boiled potatoes, butter, egg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

American Potato Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled potatoes into fairly thin slices.

  2. Dip each slice carefully into melted butter, then into beaten egg.

  3. Arrange the potato slices in a buttered cake tin.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 30 minutes in a fairly hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Turn out onto a hot dish and lightly dust with castor sugar.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the cake, cooking into a tender interior under a crisp surface.
Melted butter
Coats the slices, adding richness and helping the outside brown as it bakes.
Beaten egg
Binds the buttered slices together so they hold their shape as the cake sets.
Castor sugar
Adds light sweetness and a delicate finish on the surface after baking.

The step that matters

Dipping each slice carefully. Slices that are thick, torn or unevenly coated will not stack or set neatly. A thin, even coat of butter and egg helps the layers bind and brown evenly in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

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

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