Skip to main content
Breakfast

Potato Balls for Breakfast

A breakfast dish of mashed potato cakes coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until dry.

  2. In a hot pan, mash the potatoes with a lump of butter and a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Shape the mixture into small cakes or roll into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the balls in beaten egg and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy base that holds the shape and gives a soft, fluffy interior.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the mashed potato smoother and more flavourful.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating to the balls so it adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer layer that browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is not hot enough, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp, and the bread crumbs brown unevenly. Frying at a steady high heat sets the crust quickly and keeps the interior from becoming oily.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

More potato balls recipes

Fried 12Sweet 9English 7Baked 6Oyster 4Ragout 4 See all 126 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes