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Potato Fritters

A fried potato ball made with mashed potatoes, eggs, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them until light.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light and mix them with the mashed potatoes.

  3. Add salt to taste and fold in the cream.

Fry and serve

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls and dust with flour.

  2. Fry the balls in hot lard until brown.

  3. Drain on a napkin before serving.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the fritters and give a soft, tender interior when mashed.
Eggs
Bind the mashed potato together and add richness and structure as they set.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed potato mixture.
Flour
Dusted on the balls, it helps the outside dry and brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in hot lard until brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the balls absorb fat and turn greasy before the outside sets. Hot fat seals the surface quickly, so the fritters brown well and stay light inside.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, flour. 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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