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Chocolate Potato Cake
Two-thirds cup butter, two cups sugar, two cups flour, onehalf cup sweet milk, one cup mashed potato, one-fourth cake chocolate, one cup English walnuts, four eggs, two rounding teaspoons baking powder, one teaspoon vanilla. Cream the butter and sugar, add melted chocolate, yolks of eggs and mashed potatoes, then milk and flour with baking powder; lastly stir in whites of eggs, beaten very stiff, and nut meats.
— Mrs. Thomas E. Jones
A plain creaming-method cake with mashed potato standing in for part of the flour, which keeps it moist for days. The original gives no pan, oven or time, so those need filling in.
- A quarter cake of chocolateBaking chocolate was sold in 8-ounce cakes scored into squares, so one-fourth is 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled slightly. Modern unsweetened bars are usually 4 ounces; use half of one.
- The potatoPresumably plain boiled potato mashed smooth; the recipe does not say whether it is seasoned or left over from dinner. Work out any lumps before adding it. One cup is roughly 8 ounces, from one large or two medium potatoes.
- Sweet milkFresh unsoured milk, as opposed to the buttermilk or clabbered milk that older recipes call for by name. Whole milk is the right substitute, and there is no acid here — the leavening is all baking powder.
- Rounding teaspoonsA rounding teaspoon is more than level but less than heaping — call it about 1¼ level teaspoons each, so roughly 2½ teaspoons of baking powder in total. That is a normal amount for two cups of flour plus the weight of the potato.
- Oven and panThe recipe names no oven, pan or time. 350F is a reasonable modern setting. The batter fills a 9- or 10-inch tube pan (about 55 to 65 minutes) or two 9-inch layers (30 to 35 minutes); test with a skewer, as the potato keeps the crumb damp enough to fool a touch test.
- Folding the whitesThe whites go in last, after the flour. Fold rather than stir, and add the walnuts with them so the batter is not worked twice.
- Yield and finishingAbout twelve to sixteen slices. The recipe stops at the batter and names no frosting; a boiled or fudge frosting would suit it. It keeps well for three or four days under a cover.
Potato cakes and potato breads turn up in American community cookbooks around the turn of the twentieth century, and the reasoning is practical: starch from potato holds water in a way flour does not, so the cake stays moist long after a plain butter cake has dried out. Chocolate is a frequent partner, and the dark crumb conceals any grayness from the potato. Such recipes are popularly associated with Pennsylvania and upstate New York kitchens, though that attribution is traditional rather than documented. The book, like most subscription cookbooks of its era, prints the contribution under the name of the woman who supplied it -- Mrs. Thomas E. Jones, given by her husband's name, as was the convention -- and assumes the reader already knows how hot to build the fire.