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York Potato Cakes

York potato cakes are fried potato cakes made with boiled potatoes, flour, milk, and seasonings, served with bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

York Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mash the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Mix in the flour.

  3. Rub in the butter.

  4. Add salt and pepper to taste.

  5. Moisten the mixture with enough milk to hold it together.

Shape

  1. Press the mixture well.

  2. Roll it out on a floured board.

  3. Cut into shapes.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the shapes in hot fat until golden.

  2. Serve with slices of grilled or fried bacon.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 bulk of the cakes and give them a soft, tender body.
Flour
Adds structure and helps the mixture hold its shape when rolled and cut.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mixture binds together into a workable dough.
Fat
Frying in hot fat browns the surface and gives the cakes a golden, crisp crust.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture with milk. Add milk gradually, only until the mixture holds together. Too much makes the dough sticky and hard to shape, while too little leaves it crumbly and prone to breaking when cut and fried.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, milk. 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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