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Potato Fritters

A deep-fried dish made from grated boiled potatoes mixed with flour, eggs, milk, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

  3. Add the grated potatoes and mix lightly.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add the milk.

  5. Combine the egg and milk mixture with the potato mixture.

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

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the fritter interior.
Flour
Gives the batter structure so the fritters hold together while frying.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help set the fritters as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture, loosening the batter to a spoonable consistency.
Baking powder
Releases gas during frying, lightening the fritters so they puff.

The step that matters

Heating the lard until blue smoke rises. Oil that is not hot enough lets the batter soak up fat and turn greasy, while the batter needs high heat to set quickly on the outside.

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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