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Potato Pancakes

A savory dish of grated potatoes mixed with flour and eggs, pan‑fried into thin cakes and served with tomato preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,798 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Pare the large potatoes and soak them in cold water overnight.

  2. Grate the potatoes in the morning and drain off as much water as possible.

Make and cook the cakes

  1. Add coarse sea salt, flour, and beaten eggs to the grated potatoes.

  2. Heat butter in a griddle.

  3. Pour the potato mixture onto the griddle, making the cakes as thin as possible.

  4. Cook until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with tomato preserves.

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 + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  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. Flour + eggtop 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

Large potatoes
Provide the starch and bulk that form the body of the pancakes.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the grated potato hold together while cooking.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together and help the cakes set as they cook.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds fat that browns the surface of the cakes.

The step that matters

Drain the grated potato well. Excess water dilutes the mixture and turns the surface steamy rather than crisp, so the cakes can fall apart or fail to brown. Squeezing out as much liquid as possible helps them set and turn golden.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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