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Potato Pancakes

A fried dish made from grated potatoes, salt, flour, eggs, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the raw potatoes.

  2. Mix the grated potatoes with salt, flour, and eggs.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan over high heat.

  2. Fry the mixture until golden brown.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

Flour and egg 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
Provide the bulk and starch that give the pancakes their body.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together so the pancakes hold their shape.
Flour
Absorbs moisture from the potato and helps the mixture hold together while frying.
Lard
Conducts heat to the mixture and promotes golden browning and crisp edges.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. Grated potato holds a lot of water and starch. Hot fat sears the surface quickly, forming a crust and driving the browning reaction. If the lard is not hot enough, the pancakes absorb excess fat and turn greasy and soggy inside.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg. 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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