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 Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Form cold mashed potatoes into flat cakes.
Coat each cake in flour.
Fry the cakes in lard or good sweet dripping until they are light brown.
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.
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Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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 body of the cakes, holding their shape when pressed flat.
- Flour
- Forms a thin dry coating that helps the outside brown and crisp when fried.
- Lard or good sweet dripping
- Conducts heat to fry the cakes and adds fat that browns the surface and flavour.
The step that matters
Fry the cakes until light brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the flour coating quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and turn soggy instead of crisp.
“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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