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Potato Fritters

A fried potato dish with eggs, breadcrumbs, and ham, served from a Scottish recipe.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,458 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Slice the potatoes into pieces about the thickness of a coin.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the bread crumbs and grated ham.

  2. Dip each potato slice into the egg mixture.

  3. Fry the coated slices in plenty of olive oil until golden brown.

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 + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Kidney potatoes
Form the bulk of each fritter, staying soft and moist inside once parboiled.
Eggs
Bind the coating so it adheres to the potato slices and sets when fried.
Bread crumbs
Add body to the egg coating and help it crisp and brown in the oil.
Grated ham
Adds savoury flavour to the egg coating.

The step that matters

Frying the coated slices. Frying in plenty of hot oil sets the egg and crumb coating quickly and browns it, while the potato cooks through. Oil that is too cool lets the coating soak up grease and turn soggy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, ham, olive):

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, ham, olive. 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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