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Potato Cakes

A fried dish made from mashed potatoes, milk, flour, eggs, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine mashed potatoes and enough milk to make a thin mixture.

  2. Add 5 to 6 tablespoons of flour, 3 beaten eggs, melted butter, and salt. Mix until well combined.

Cook

  1. Heat a griddle and fry the mixture as you would griddle cakes.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

Mashed potatoes
Provides the bulk and soft, moist body of the cakes.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter and helps the cakes set when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and helps the surface brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Heat a griddle and fry the mixture as you would griddle cakes. If the griddle is too cool, the cakes absorb fat, turn greasy and stick; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre sets. Moderate, even heat lets the eggs and starch set through before the surface darkens.

Swap the potato

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

  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 milk, flour, egg, butter. 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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