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Potato Pancakes

A fried potato batter made with eggs, flour, and sugar, cooked in butter and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Peel and grate the potatoes.

  2. In a bowl, combine grated potatoes, eggs, flour, sugar, and salt. Mix well until combined.

Fry

  1. In a skillet, heat a mixture of butter and lard over medium heat.

  2. Spoon the potato mixture into the skillet and fry slowly until golden brown on both sides.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Potatoes
Form the main body of the pancake and, once grated, supply starch that helps hold it together.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together so the pancakes hold their shape while frying.
Flour
Absorbs excess moisture from the grated potato and adds body to the batter.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.
Butter and lard
Fat for frying that conducts heat and adds flavour and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Fry slowly over medium heat. Grated potato holds a lot of water and starch. If the heat is too high the outside browns before the inside cooks through, and the pancake can burn or stay raw in the middle. Slow frying lets the interior cook while the surface turns golden.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, 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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