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Potato Pancakes

A fried dish of grated potatoes mixed with eggs, flour, and salt, cooked in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Pancakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the raw potatoes and let the water drain off a little.

  2. In a bowl, combine the drained potatoes, beaten eggs, salt, and flour.

  3. Heat lard in a skillet over medium heat.

Fry

  1. Spoon the potato mixture into the hot lard 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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Raw potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the pancakes their body and crisp exterior.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together so the pancakes hold their shape while frying.
All-purpose flour
Absorbs excess moisture and helps the mixture bind and brown evenly.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the pancakes a golden, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Fry slowly until golden brown on both sides. Grated potato holds a lot of water and starch. Frying over medium heat lets the centre cook through before the outside burns, while the lard browns the surface through the Maillard reaction.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour. 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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