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Potato Cakes

Fried cakes made from mashed potatoes, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Potato Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix cold mashed potatoes with beaten eggs and season with salt if necessary.

  2. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into oblong cakes.

Fry

  1. Heat beef drippings and butter in a pan.

  2. Fry the cakes until browned on one side, then turn carefully to brown the other side.

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 + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Cold mashed potatoes
Provides the bulk and starch that hold the cakes together.
Eggs
Bind the potato mixture so the cakes keep their shape while frying.
Beef drippings
Conduct heat into the cakes and add savory, rich flavor to the crust.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and helps the cakes brown well.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes until browned on one side, then turn carefully. The cakes are soft and held together mainly by egg. Frying on a moderately hot fat sets and browns the surface so it can support the cake. Turning too early or too roughly can break them apart.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, beef, 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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