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Plain Potato Fritters

A fried potato batter made with flour, egg, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cottonseed share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the potatoes and place them in a bowl.

  2. Add flour, beaten egg, sugar, and salt, then stir rapidly.

  3. If the mixture is too watery, drain excess water and reduce flour to 1 ½ tablespoons.

Fry

  1. Heat oil in a deep pan to about 2 inches deep until hot.

  2. Drop the mixture by tablespoonfuls into the hot oil.

  3. Fry for about 3 minutes until well done and crisp.

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 + cottonseedtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together22 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg 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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the fritters their body and inside texture.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the batter hold together while frying.
Egg
Binds the grated potato and flour so the fritters hold their shape.

The step that matters

Drain excess water from the mixture. Grated potato releases water that makes the batter loose, so fritters can fall apart or steam instead of crisping. Draining it and adjusting the flour keeps the batter thick enough to hold together and brown in the hot oil.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Eggplantfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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