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Potato Pancakes

A fried dish of grated potatoes mixed with eggs, flour, salt, and baking powder, served hot with apple sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes and soak them in cold water for several hours.

  2. Grate the potatoes and drain them well.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated potatoes, eggs, flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Add a little milk to achieve the desired consistency.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and add butter.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the skillet to form small cakes.

  3. Cook until browned on both sides.

  4. Serve hot with apple sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Potatoes
Form the main body of the pancake, giving bulk and a starchy, tender interior.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Flour
Absorbs moisture from the potatoes and helps the mixture hold together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lighten the cakes slightly as they cook.
Butter
Conducts heat to the surface and adds fat for browning and flavour.

The step that matters

Drain the grated potatoes well. Grated potatoes release a lot of water. Excess moisture dilutes the batter and steams the cakes instead of letting them brown, so they can turn soggy and fall apart in the pan.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, egg, flour, milk, butter, sauce):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, flour, milk, butter, sauce. 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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