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Potato Fritters

A fried potato fritter made with mashed potatoes, cream, eggs, lemon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream and hot mashed potatoes until light.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and sugar while warm.

  3. Add the lemon juice, grated peel, and brandy.

  4. Fold in the sifted flour, baking soda, and salt alternately with the whipped egg whites.

Shape and chill

  1. Form the mixture into balls with floured hands and chill until cold and stiff.

  2. Roll the balls in beaten egg and cracker crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Drain, sprinkle with sugar, and 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and soft, moist body of the fritter interior.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture while enriching its texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they lighten the mixture and help it rise and stay airy.
Flour
Gives the mixture enough structure to hold its shape when formed and fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the lemon to lighten the batter and aid rising.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the interior tender and smooth.

The step that matters

Chill the balls until cold and stiff. Chilling firms the fat and starch so the balls keep their shape and do not fall apart or absorb excess oil while frying.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, sugar, lemon, brandy, 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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