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Dessert

Potato Drop Cakes

A batter of mashed potato, milk, butter, eggs, flour, and salt is cooked on a griddle to make potato drop cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Drop Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine mashed potato, warm milk, melted butter, beaten eggs, prepared flour, and salt.

  2. Beat the mixture until well combined.

Cook and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased griddle.

  2. Cook until golden brown and serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Mashed potato
Adds moisture and body, giving the cakes a soft, tender interior.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set as it cooks, holding the cakes together.
Prepared flour
Provides starch and structure so the cakes hold their shape while cooking.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it can be dropped from a spoon.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown on the griddle.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown. The batter is soft and wet, so moderate heat is needed. Too high, the outside browns and burns before the centre sets; too low, the cakes turn pale and stay doughy.

Swap the potato

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

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

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