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Potato Balls

A fried ball made from boiled potatoes, eggs, butter, breadcrumbs, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Balls

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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato

  1. Rub the potatoes through a sieve or mash them smoothly.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the potatoes and stir until heated through.

  4. Add one egg and mix into a paste, then transfer to a plate to cool.

Shape and coat

  1. Roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Beat the second egg and brush it over the balls.

  3. Cover the balls well with bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in hot fat 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the balls and give them a soft, moist interior.
Eggs
Bind the potato into a paste and form a coating that helps crumbs stick.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the mixture stay moist.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the paste before shaping. A warm, soft paste is sticky and hard to roll, and it can fall apart or absorb too much egg and crumb. Cooling lets it firm up so the balls hold their shape through frying.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, bread, pepper. 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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