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Potato Fritters

A fried potato batter made with boiled potatoes, flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the potatoes.

  2. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together, then add the grated potatoes, mixing lightly.

  3. Add the milk and beaten eggs, and mix until combined.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a kettle to a depth of 3 inches until it is very hot and blue smoke rises.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard and fry for 8 minutes.

  3. Drain well and serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk and moist, starchy body of the fritter interior.
Flour
Binds the grated potato and egg mixture so the fritters hold their shape.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the fritters as they fry.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the fritters puff and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture to loosen the batter and soften the texture.

The step that matters

Heat the lard until very hot before frying. If the fat is not hot enough, the fritters absorb more oil, turn greasy, and cook unevenly. Hot fat sets the outside quickly, keeping the inside tender and the fritters crisp.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, 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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