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Potato Pancakes

A savory dish of grated potatoes mixed with milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder, then fried in lard or butter.

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

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Grate the potatoes into cold water.

  2. Drain the water from the grated potatoes.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the potatoes.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the eggs, salt, flour, and baking powder.

Fry

  1. Fry the mixture in lard or butter like regular pancakes.

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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that give the pancakes their body and texture.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together and add structure to the batter.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the batter hold together while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter so the pancakes rise a little.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the potato starch into a loose batter.

The step that matters

Drain the grated potatoes. Excess water dilutes the batter and keeps the pancakes from crisping, so the grated potatoes should be drained well before the milk is added.

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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