Skip to main content
Main

Potato Boulettes

Potato boulette is a fried potato ball made with mashed potatoes, parsley, eggs, butter, milk, flour, and fried parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Boulettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the puree

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash them while hot.

  3. Mix in the chopped parsley and yolks of eggs.

  4. Add the butter and boiled milk to the puree.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Shape and fry

  1. Sprinkle flour on a surface.

  2. Make balls of the puree.

  3. Roll the balls in the flour.

  4. Heat boiling fat in a pan.

  5. Fry the balls until brown.

  6. Serve dry with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Form the bulk of the puree, giving the boulettes their soft, starchy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the texture and carrying flavor.
Egg yolks
Bind the puree and add richness to hold the balls together.
Beaten egg whites
Lighten the puree with trapped air, giving a more tender interior.
Flour
Dusts the outside of the balls so they brown and crisp when fried.
Boiled milk
Adds moisture and softness to the puree.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites last. Egg whites trap air only if they stay whipped; overmixing deflates them and makes the boulettes dense rather than light.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes