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Baked Potato Balls

Baked potato balls are fried and baked balls made from mashed potatoes, butter, milk, egg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Baked Potato Balls

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.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix cold mashed potatoes with warmed butter and warmed milk in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Beat the egg and stir it into the potato mixture.

  3. Fry the mixture in a greased frying pan until hot, avoiding sticking.

  4. Let the mixture cool until stiff.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the mixture into balls and roll them in flour.

  2. Place the balls on a greased baking pan and bake at 400°F (200°C) until well browned.

  3. 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 main bulk and starch that give the balls their body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Milk
Adds moisture so the potato mixture becomes smooth and easy to work.
Egg
Binds the potato mixture so the balls hold together when shaped and cooked.
Flour
Coats the outside of the balls, reducing stickiness while they are handled.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until stiff.. Warm mashed potato is soft and sticky. Cooling firms it so the mixture can be shaped into balls that hold their form instead of slumping or sticking to the hands.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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