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Potato Cakes

A fried dish of mashed potatoes mixed with chopped hard‑boiled eggs, milk, salt, and pepper, formed into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes finely.

Shape the cakes

  1. Mix in the chopped hard-boiled eggs, salt, pepper, and milk or cream.

  2. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  3. Dust both sides with flour.

Fry

  1. Fry the cakes in oil or butter over medium heat until golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 bulk of the cakes, giving them body and a soft, starchy interior.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, crumbly texture to the mashed potato.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the mashed potato easy to shape.
Flour
Dusted on the outside so the cakes brown evenly and develop a light crust while frying.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Medium heat lets the outside brown and crisp while the centre heats through. Too high a heat browns the flour and surface before the cakes are warm inside, and too low a heat leaves them greasy and pale.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

More potato cakes recipes

Irish 4Mashed 4Sweet 4Fried 3Viennese 3 See all 131 →

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