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Potato Cake

A fried or baked cake made from crushed boiled potatoes, butter, salt, flour, yeast, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine crushed potatoes, butter, and salt.

  2. Mix in flour and yeast if using.

  3. Add milk and work the mixture into a very firm dough.

  4. Roll out the dough to 1½ to 2 inches thick.

Shape and cook

  1. Cut the dough to fit your greased frying pan.

  2. Flour the dough pieces.

  3. Place the dough pieces in the pan.

  4. Cover with a plate and bake.

  5. Shake the pan occasionally to prevent burning.

  6. When half done, turn the cake.

  7. Cover with the plate again.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dough, giving the cake its body and starchy structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the dough hold together and brown in the pan.
All-purpose flour
Adds starch and gluten-forming protein that help bind the firm dough.
Yeast
Produces gas during fermentation, adding some lift and airiness to the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture that lets the crushed potato be worked into a cohesive dough.

The step that matters

Shake the pan occasionally to prevent burning. The cake is cooked in fat over direct heat with little liquid, so the base can scorch before the centre sets. Shaking the pan and turning the cake at halfway help it cook evenly and brown without burning.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk. 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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