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Potato Cakes

A savory dish of mashed potatoes mixed with flour, baking powder, salt, dripping, and sour cream, formed into squares and fried or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mash the cooked potatoes well on a clean surface.

  2. In a bowl, mix the baking powder and salt with the flour.

  3. Add the mashed potatoes, dripping, and sour cream or milk to the flour mixture.

  4. Quickly form the mixture into a firm paste.

Shape and cook

  1. Roll out the paste thinly on a floured surface and cut into squares.

  2. Cook the squares on a floured frying pan or in the oven until brown on one side, then turn to brown the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with butter.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked potatoes
Provide the bulk and moisture that make the dough soft and tender.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste so the cakes hold their shape when rolled and cooked.
Dripping
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough to lighten the cakes slightly as they cook.
Sour cream or milk
Adds moisture and a little richness so the dough binds smoothly.

The step that matters

Forming the firm paste. Working the mixture quickly keeps the dough from becoming overworked and tough, since gluten in flour develops with handling. The paste should be firm enough to roll thinly without sticking or cracking.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream. 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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