Why it works: Potato and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,051 recipes mention both. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Also mentioned in the method: fish
Directions
Prepare the fish
Soak the fish in cold water overnight.
Remove the bones and skin, then chop the fish very fine.
Make the cakes
Peel, boil, and mash the potatoes.
Combine the chopped fish with the mashed potatoes and stir with a fork.
Mold the mixture into balls and flatten them to half an inch thick.
Fry
Fry the cakes in sweet beef drippings or the fat from fried salt pork until brown.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Potato + beeftop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together2,051 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Codfish
- Provides the main flavor and protein, bound into the cakes by the potato.
- White potatoes
- Adds bulk and starch that binds the fish and gives the cakes a soft, tender interior.
The step that matters
Soaking the fish overnight. Soaking draws out salt from salted cod so the cakes taste mild rather than overly salty. Under-soaking leaves the fish too salty to enjoy.
“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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