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Potato Fritters

A fried potato batter made with mashed potatoes, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon, flour, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Work the cream into the mashed potato.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and sugar, and whip to a froth.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, flour, and nutmeg, and beat for three minutes before folding in the egg whites.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot sweet lard and fry until light brown.

  2. Drain on clean, heated paper and sift white sugar over them before serving.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potato
Provides the bulk and soft, tender body inside the fritters.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, when whipped, lighten it with air and set during frying.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the batter soft and tender.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold its shape while frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the outside brown as it fries.

The step that matters

Fry until light brown in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the fritters soak up fat and turn greasy before the eggs set. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through. Frying at a steady, hot temperature gives a crisp exterior and a set interior.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, flour, lemon, nutmeg. 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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