Skip to main content
Main

Chicken and Potato Cakes

Chicken and potato cakes are baked patties made from minced chicken, mashed potatoes, egg, and flour, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Chicken and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,756 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Chicken and Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the remaining chicken finely.

  2. Combine the minced chicken with cold mashed potatoes.

  3. Bind the mixture with an egg and add flour as needed.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a well-buttered baking pan.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  3. Arrange on a platter and surround with reheated chicken gravy.

  4. For garnish, press the yolk of a hard-boiled egg through a ricer on top of each cake.

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. Chicken + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,756 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  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. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Cold mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that hold the cakes together and keep them moist.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold their shape while baking.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and firms the mixture so it can be shaped and dropped.
Remaining cooked chicken
Supplies the main protein and savory flavor of the cakes.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, egg, 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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes