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Dessert

Potato Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, citron, raisins, nuts, coffee, chocolate, grated potatoes, spices, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and chocolate are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells buttery, creamy. The science ↓

Potato 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. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the citron, raisins, nuts, black coffee, and melted chocolate.

  2. Fold in the grated potatoes, cinnamon, cloves, and baking soda.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for one hour or 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. Coffee + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

  2. Nuts + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together440 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Coffee + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps cream with butter to build a light structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness, moisture, and emulsifying fat that helps bind the batter.
Grated raw potatoes
Add moisture and body to the batter, keeping the cake tender after baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity in the batter to help it rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Fold in the grated potatoes, cinnamon, cloves, and baking soda. Baking soda needs an acidic partner to react and raise the batter. Folding gently keeps the air already trapped in the creamed butter and sugar, so the cake rises evenly rather than turning dense.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, raisin, nuts, coffee, chocolate):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, raisin, nuts, coffee, chocolate. 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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