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Potato Tea Oakes

A flat cake made from mashed potatoes, flour, butter, sugar, eggs and baking powder, baked in a hot oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Tea Oakes

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

  1. Pass the mashed potatoes through a sieve.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the potatoes with butter, baking powder, sugar, flour, and beaten eggs.

  2. Mould the mixture into a flat cake.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Cut open while hot.

  3. Butter while hot.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Mashed potatoes
Provide moisture and a soft, tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Provides structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set its structure when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. The surface browns through heat-driven Maillard reactions, which give flavor and color. Underbaking leaves the centre pale and doughy, because the eggs and starch have not fully set.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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