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Fried Potato Quenelles

Fried potato quenelles are shaped from a rich potato mixture, coated in seasoned flour, and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Potato Quenelles

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a rich potato croquette mixture.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into quenelles using two dessert spoons.

  2. Roll each quenelle in seasoned flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat or clarified butter until golden.

  2. Drain and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Floury potatoes
Provide starch that binds the mixture into a soft, shapeable dough.
Seasoned flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the quenelles brown and crisp when fried.
Hot fat or clarified butter
Conducts heat to fry the quenelles and browns their surface.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat until golden. If the fat is not hot enough, the quenelles absorb oil and turn greasy before the surface sets. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre heats through. Steady heat gives an even golden crust.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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