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Potato Fritters

A fried patty made from mashed potatoes, egg, sugar, and nutmeg or lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,052 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Mash the cold potatoes until smooth.

  2. Beat in the egg and add nutmeg or lemon peel for flavor.

Fry and serve

  1. Form the mixture into small round cakes.

  2. Fry in hot fat until brown.

  3. Serve piled high on a dish, sprinkled with sugar.

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

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

  2. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 base of the fritters, giving them body and a soft interior.
Egg
Binds the mashed potato so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the finished fritters, sprinkled over them when served.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until brown. If the fat is not hot enough, the cakes absorb more oil and brown unevenly, becoming greasy instead of crisp. Frying at a steady high heat sets the surface quickly, so the outside browns before the inside dries out.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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