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Potato Balls

Potato balls are small, fried dumplings made from mashed potatoes, butter, salt, cayenne, milk or cream, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Balls

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mash the cold potatoes in a bowl with the clarified butter, salt, cayenne, milk or cream, and the beaten egg, then rub the mixture together for five minutes.

  2. Shape the mixture into balls the size of a walnut.

Coat and fry

  1. Cover the balls with the remaining beaten egg and then coat with finely sifted bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the balls in boiling butter, lard, or bacon fat 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mealy potatoes
Their starch gives the balls a light, fluffy body when mashed while cold.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender texture and helping the balls brown in frying.
Beaten egg
Binds the mashed potato together and forms a coating that helps the crumbs stick.
Bread crumbs (in the method)
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in fat that is already boiling. Frying in hot fat seals the crumb coating quickly, so it browns crisp and golden without the balls soaking up grease or falling apart. Fat that is not hot enough lets the coating absorb oil and turn heavy.

Swap the potato

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

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

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