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Potato Klosse

Potato Klosse are small potato dumplings made with baked potato flesh, butter, egg yolks, and optional breadcrumbs and Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Klosse

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Scoop out the floury part of the baked potatoes until you have about 6 ounces.

  2. Beat the butter until creamy and mix it with the potato flour.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolks, nutmeg, pepper, and salt; mix thoroughly.

  4. Mold the mixture into small balls.

Boil and serve

  1. Drop the balls into boiling salted water using a metal spoon dipped in boiling water each time.

  2. Alternatively, mix in bread crumbs and Parmesan, mold, and boil as above.

  3. Sprinkle fried bread crumbs over the klosse when serving.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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

Baked potatoes
Provide the floury starch that gives the klosse their body and soft, tender crumb.
Egg yolks
Bind the potato mixture and add richness so the balls hold together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the dough and improving its flavour.

The step that matters

Dropping the balls into boiling water. Dipping the metal spoon in boiling water before each ball keeps the dough from sticking to it, so each klosse releases cleanly. Boiling water keeps the dumplings intact while they set.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, nutmeg, pepper, 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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