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Potato Patties

A baked potato patty made with grated potatoes, milk, butter, eggs, and bread lining.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Grate the potatoes to a fine flour.

  2. Moisten the grated potatoes with a little milk and mix in the butter until creamy.

  3. Boil the milk and stir it into the potatoes, cooking until smooth.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the 2 beaten eggs; let cool.

  5. Beat in the yolks of 4 eggs.

  6. Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold into the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter small patty pans and line them with grated bread.

  2. Fill the lined pans with the batter and bake at 400°F (200°C) until deep yellow.

  3. Serve immediately with fish or fowl.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mealy potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the patties their soft, airy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the patties structure.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiffness, they lighten the batter and help it rise in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the potatoes and helps form a smooth, cohesive batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lightens the batter and makes it rise. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving dense patties, so fold gently and quickly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, 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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