Rotten potatoes have a distinctive unpleasant odour, and I can't find any definitive answer as to what the chemical involved is. I was thinking it might be Butyric acid, from the fermentation of the starch, but according to Wikipedia:
Butyric acid is present in, and is the main distinctive smell of, human vomit.
And those puppies don't smell like vomit. They're more like rotting flesh – the reason I'm asking is that I've spent half the day looking for a dead animal that the cat brought in or something, only to discover that the horrible smell was coming from the potato box.
