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Potato Cakes

A fried dish of mashed potatoes shaped into cakes, cooked in beef drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix the cold mashed potatoes with the beaten egg yolk until well combined.

  2. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into cakes, similar to sausages.

Fry

  1. Heat a skillet and grease it with hot beef drippings.

  2. Place the cakes in the skillet, cover tightly, and cook for 5 minutes until the bottom is browned.

  3. Turn the cakes, remove the cover, and fry until the other side is nicely browned.

  4. 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. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Cold mashed potatoes
Form the main body of the cakes and hold their shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the potatoes together so the cakes hold their shape.
Beef drippings
Fat for frying that carries heat and browns the outside of the cakes.

The step that matters

Cover tightly during the first frying. Covering traps steam so the cakes cook through and the potato centres heat evenly. Removing the cover for the second side lets the surface dry and brown.

Swap the potato

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

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

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