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Pan Cakes

A potato-based pan cake made with eggs, onion, and seasoning, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pan Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Peel, wash, and grate the raw Irish potatoes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated potatoes with eggs, chopped onion, salt, and Lahmann’s naehrsalz.

Fry the cakes

  1. Heat equal parts of nutcoa and butter in a frying pan.

  2. Spoon the mixture into the hot pan to form little, round, thin cakes.

  3. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + potatotop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw irish potatoes
Grated starch that gives the cakes their bulk and body as they cook.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together so the cakes hold their shape in the pan.
Onion
Adds savory flavor and moisture to the batter.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the cakes brown in the hot pan.

The step that matters

Spoon the mixture into the hot pan. Grated potato starts to oxidize and release water once it sits, so the batter should be shaped and fried right away. A hot pan sears the outside quickly, helping the cakes brown and hold their shape instead of steaming and sticking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, potato, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, potato, butter. 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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