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Potato Fritters

A fried potato mixture with milk, cream, egg yolks, breadcrumbs, cheese, and spices, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Fritters

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Pass the boiled potatoes through a sieve.

  3. Mix the sieved potatoes with milk, cream, egg yolks, bread crumbs, grated cheese, flour, butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and stir the mixture well.

  4. Heat the mixture through.

Fry and serve

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot clarified butter or fat.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

  3. Drain the fritters on a cloth.

  4. Shake the fritters in a frying basket.

  5. Garnish the fritters with crispy parsley.

  6. Serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + cheddar cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together932 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cheddar cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,436 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 fritters, giving a soft, starchy interior once boiled and sieved.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and enrich it, helping the fritters hold their shape while frying.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the mixture, helping the fritters hold together and keep a firm texture.
Cheddar cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the fritters brown as it melts and toasts in the fat.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the potato mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the fritters absorb excess oil and turn greasy, while the mixture may not set. Hot fat seals the outside quickly so they brown and hold their shape.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, egg, bread, cheddar cheese, flour, butter):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, bread, cheddar cheese, 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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