Name: Potato Cake
Ingredients: 2-3 cups butter; 2 cups sugar; 2 cups sifted flour; 1 cup hot mashed potato; 1-2 cups milk; 1 cup chopped nuts; 1 cup ground chocolate; 4 eggs; 2 teaspoons baking powder

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

Ingredients

Directions

Cream the butter and sugar together.
Add the yolks of the eggs, mashed potato, and ground chocolate.
Sift the baking powder and flour together five times.
Add the milk and flour alternately to the mixture.
Fold in the beaten egg whites and chopped nuts last.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Nuts + chocolatetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together440 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together54 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Swap the potato

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

Arrowrootfits about as well
Sweet potatofits about as well
Potatothe original
Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, milk, nuts, chocolate, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.