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Raw Potato Fritters

A fried batter of grated potatoes, eggs, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raw Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and grate the potatoes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the eggs and enough flour to create a batter.

  3. Add the grated potatoes and salt, and mix thoroughly.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown and cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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, with starch that helps bind and crisp the batter.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato and flour together so the fritters hold their shape.
Flour
Thickens the mixture into a batter that coats the potato and helps it set.
Boiling lard
Conducts heat quickly, browning the outside and crisping the surface while the inside cooks through.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown and cooked through. Grated potato holds a lot of water and can stay raw inside while the outside darkens. Frying at a steady, hot temperature in batches sets the batter and cooks the centre without burning the surface.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour. 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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