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Potato Cakes

Potato cakes are fried cakes made from grated potatoes, eggs, flour, salt, baking powder, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the raw potatoes and measure 1 quart after grating.

  2. In a bowl, combine the grated potatoes, beaten eggs, flour, salt, and baking powder.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a skillet over medium-high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard to form flat cakes.

  3. Fry until golden brown, then turn and cook the other side.

  4. 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. 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
Form the bulk of the cakes, providing starch and body for the mixture.
Eggs
Bind the grated potatoes together so the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture hold together in the pan.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the cakes slightly as they cook.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown, then turn and cook the other side. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs steady heat to develop flavour and colour. Turning too early can break the cakes apart before the surface has set, so let each side firm up before flipping.

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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