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Potato Pancakes

A savory dish of grated potatoes mixed with eggs, flour, milk, and baking powder, then fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the potatoes and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Add the eggs, flour, milk, and baking powder; mix well.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat deep fat in a pan and fry the mixture like ordinary pancakes.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Bind the grated potato together and help the pancakes hold their shape.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the batter hold together while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the pancakes and gives them a softer texture.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the pancake, providing starch that crisps as it fries.

The step that matters

Frying in hot deep fat. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the pancakes absorb excess oil, turn greasy, and cook through unevenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, flour, milk. 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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