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Bohemian Potato Puff

A fried puff of mashed potato dough seasoned with onion and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Bohemian Potato Puff

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel, wash, and boil the potatoes until soft enough to mash.

  2. Drain most of the water, leaving a little, and add a handful of salt.

  3. Return the potatoes to the stove and sift in the flour, covering closely for 5 minutes.

  4. Mash the potatoes until smooth and free of lumps.

Fry the puffs

  1. In a skillet, heat the goose fat and finely chop the onion, cooking until light brown.

  2. Dip a tablespoon in the hot fat, scoop a spoonful of potato dough, and place it in the skillet.

  3. Repeat until all the dough is used, dipping the spoon in fat each time.

  4. Let the puffs brown slightly.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dough, becoming soft and fluffy when mashed.
All-purpose flour
Absorbs moisture from the potatoes and helps the dough hold its shape.
Goose fat
Carries flavor and gives the puffs a golden, crisp browned surface when fried.
Onion
Adds savory flavor to the fat as it cooks until light brown.

The step that matters

Mashing until smooth and free of lumps. Lumps of flour or unmashed potato leave pockets in the dough, so the puffs may brown unevenly or hold together poorly in the hot fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour. 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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