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Potato Griddle-cakes

A savory dish of grated potatoes mixed with flour, eggs, and milk, fried until golden and served with fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Potato Griddle-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel, wash, and grate the potatoes into a bowl of cold water to keep them white.

  2. Strain off the water and pour the boiling milk over the grated potatoes.

Make the batter

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

  2. If desired, add a little finely chopped onion for flavor.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the mixture in a hot skillet with lard or butter until golden brown.

  2. Serve with stewed or preserved fruit, especially huckleberries.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 starchy bulk that gives the griddle cakes their body.
Flour
Adds structure by binding the grated potato into a cohesive batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cakes rise and turn light.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cakes as they cook.
Milk
Adds moisture and softens the potato starch for a tender interior.

The step that matters

Fry in a hot skillet until golden brown. A hot pan sets the outside quickly and browns it through the Maillard reaction, while a cool pan lets the batter soak up fat and turn greasy and pale.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, flour, egg, milk, butter):

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

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