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Irish Potato Snow

A baked potato pancake made with grated potatoes, eggs, cream, butter, and optional sugar and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Irish Potato Snow

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.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Parboil the potatoes.

  2. Grate the potatoes when nearly cold.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs.

  2. Add the cream, butter, and salt or sugar to taste.

  3. If using sugar, grate in the nutmeg.

  4. Gently fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes.

  2. Serve hot as a vegetable.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, giving a light, grated texture once baked.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift and airiness, while yolks help bind the mixture and enrich it.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the baked dish soft and tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps the dish brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the well-beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air that gives the dish its lightness. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so folding slowly keeps the mixture airy and risen when baked.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, sugar, 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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