Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Cake. No. 2

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, grated boiled potatoes, pecans, spices, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. No. 2

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture.

  5. Fold in the grated boiled potatoes and chopped pecans.

  6. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes out clean.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pecans + nutmegtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together455 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light crumb.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat that gives a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise.
Boiled potatoes
Grated potato adds moisture that keeps the crumb soft.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown it while creaming in air pockets.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites. Stirring hard knocks that air out, so the cake rises less and turns dense.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, flour, potato, egg, nutmeg. 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.

More potato cake recipes

Chocolate 14Sweet 8Chocolate Walnut 3 See all 66 →

You might also like

Chocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesDeep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesChocolate CookiesChocolate Cookies76 recipes