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Potato Fritters

A fried batter of grated boiled potatoes, cream, flour, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Grate the cold boiled potatoes into a bowl.

  2. Add the cream or new milk and enough flour to create a stiff batter.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks into the mixture.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites and salt.

Fry

  1. Heat sweet butter in a frying pan and drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pan.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide the bulk of the fritter, giving a soft, tender interior.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and help the fritters rise.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold its shape in the pan.
Cream or new milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the batter soft.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites hold air bubbles that lighten the batter. Overmixing or deflating them makes the fritters dense and flat, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the potato

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

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

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