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Potato Fritters

A fried dish of mashed potato mixed with milk, butter, sugar, nutmeg, eggs, and salt, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the mashed potato, hot milk, butter, sugar, and nutmeg in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and stir until smooth and light.

  3. Spread the mixture about ½ inch deep in a buttered dish and let it cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cooled, cut into squares.

  2. Dip each square in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling oil until golden brown and serve immediately.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potato
Forms the bulk of the fritter and gives a soft, tender interior.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set light and firm when cooled and fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and softens the texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool fully before cutting and frying. Cooling lets the starch and egg proteins set so the mixture holds its shape. Cutting or frying it warm can make the squares soft and cause them to break apart in the oil.

Swap the potato

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

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

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