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Potato Cake

A baked potato cake made with mashed potatoes, flour, butter, salt, and brushed with egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Peel and cook the potatoes until soft.

  2. Mash the potatoes and knead with flour, butter, and salt on a pastry board.

  3. Roll out the mixture to an inch thickness using a rolling pin.

  4. Dip a round biscuit cutter in flour and cut out small biscuits.

Bake

  1. Place the biscuits directly in a baking pan without greasing or flouring it.

  2. Brush the tops of the biscuits with the egg yolk and bake at 400°F (200°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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that give the dough its soft, tender body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, crumbly texture in the baked biscuits.
Flour
Binds the mashed potato and butter into a workable dough that holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top to promote browning and a golden surface.

The step that matters

Brush the tops with egg yolk before baking. The yolk's proteins and fats help the surface brown evenly to a golden color. Brushing unevenly or too thickly can cause pale patches or pooling, so apply a thin, even coat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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