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Potato Patties

Potato patties are baked hollowed potatoes filled with a mixture of mashed potato, cream, butter, eggs, and seasonings.

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 Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash the potatoes.

  2. Bake them until just underdone.

  3. Remove from the oven.

  4. Cut off the tops.

  5. Scoop out the insides.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix the scooped potato with cream, butter, salt, sugar, flavoring, and beaten eggs (yolks and whites added separately).

  2. Fill the hollowed potatoes with the mixture.

  3. Place them upright in a buttered dish.

  4. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 12-15 minutes.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the hollow shells and provide the starchy bulk of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm and lightly golden in the oven.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays soft and smooth.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a tender texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Scoop out the insides carefully. Leaving a sturdy wall of potato keeps the shell from tearing or collapsing, so the filling stays contained while it bakes.

Swap the potato

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

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

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