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Potato Fritters

A fried dough ball made from mashed potatoes, cream, eggs, sugar, lemon, brandy, flour, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the cream until light.

  2. Stir in the hot mashed potatoes and the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Add sugar, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, and brandy.

  4. Sift the flour with baking soda and salt, then fold in alternately with the whipped egg whites.

Shape and coat

  1. Form the mixture into balls with floured hands and chill until firm.

  2. Roll the balls in beaten egg and cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Drain on paper towels, sprinkle with sugar, and serve hot.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Heavy cream
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fritter centers tender and light.
Mashed potatoes
Provide body and moisture, giving the mixture a soft, tender interior.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help bind it with fat and emulsifiers.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the mixture and add airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure that helps the balls hold their shape while frying.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon juice to lighten the batter and aid rising.

The step that matters

Chill the balls until firm. Chilling firms the fat and starch so the coated balls hold their shape in hot oil instead of spreading or breaking apart.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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