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Dessert

Pecan Cake

A chocolate pecan cake made with mashed potatoes and butter, baked in a loaf pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Pecan Cake

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 ↓

Pecan Cake

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Dry the pecans with flour.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, sugar, and chocolate together.

  2. Beat in the eggs one at a time without separating them.

  3. Add the smooth mashed potatoes, then the milk or water, flour, and finally the pecans.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the batter into a loaf pan and bake until done.

  2. Once cooled, frost the cake.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating flour and trapping air when creamed.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a firm, cohesive crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and softness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets each one blend fully into the creamed butter and sugar. Adding them too fast can make the batter curdle or separate, which affects the cake's texture.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, chocolate, egg, cinnamon. 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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