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Potato Cakes

Pan‑fried cakes made from leftover mashed potatoes, milk, onion juice, spices, cheese, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the mashed potatoes with a little hot milk until light.

  2. Season with onion juice, salt, pepper, parsley, grated cheese, and cayenne.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into small round flat cakes.

  2. Dip each cake in flour.

  3. Sauté in hot butter until browned on one side, then turn and brown the other side.

  4. Alternatively, pack the mixture into a brick-shaped mold, slice, dip in flour, and sauté in butter.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the cakes and hold their soft, tender body.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and some browning as the cakes cook in butter.
Butter
Sautéing fat that browns the cake surfaces and adds rich flavor.
Flour
Dusted on each cake so the outside browns and crisps during sautéing.

The step that matters

Sauté in hot butter until browned on one side, then turn. The butter must be hot enough to brown the flour-dusted surface quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb grease and turn soggy instead of forming a golden crust. Turning only once, after a firm brown crust forms, keeps the cakes from breaking apart.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, pepper, parsley, cheese, flour, 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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