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Potato Pancakes

A batter of mashed potatoes, milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder is fried into golden pancakes.

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 Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the cold mashed potatoes, sweet milk, eggs, and salt thoroughly.

  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the potato mixture and beat well.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a hot buttered griddle.

  2. Fry until golden brown on both sides.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure so the pancakes hold together when fried.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the pancakes rise and turn light rather than dense.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the pancakes body and structure.
Mashed potatoes
Supply moisture and starch, giving the pancakes a soft, tender interior.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a spoonable consistency.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown on both sides. The batter is moist and starchy, so the griddle must be hot enough to brown the surface quickly. Browning from the Maillard reaction adds flavour and a crisp exterior, while a cool pan lets the pancakes soak up butter and turn greasy and pale.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

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