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Potato Pompon

Fried balls made from cold mashed potatoes, egg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato Pompon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the cold mashed potatoes.

  2. Take a tablespoonful of the mixture and roll it into a ball.

  3. Dip each ball in a beaten egg.

  4. Roll the egg-coated balls in bread or cracker crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry the balls in hot fat until golden brown, similar to frying doughnuts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 main body of the balls, holding their shape when rolled and fried.
Egg
Binds the coating to the potato balls so the crumbs stick.
Bread crumbs or cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the crumb coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it browns. Hot fat seals the crust quickly, keeping the inside moist and the outside golden.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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