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Potato Cakes

A baked dish of mashed potatoes shaped into cakes and floured.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Shape the cold mashed potatoes into flat, round cakes.

  2. Coat the cakes generously with flour.

  3. Place the cakes in a floured baking pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

  2. Serve on a hot, flat dish.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold mashed potatoes
Form the body of the cakes, holding their shape while they bake.
Flour
Coats the outside so the cakes brown and develop a crisp surface in the oven.

The step that matters

Coat the cakes generously with flour. Flour on the surface absorbs moisture and promotes browning through the Maillard reaction, so an uneven or thin coating can leave pale, soft patches.

“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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