Skip to main content
Main

Potato Balls

A fried snack made from boiled potatoes, butter, spices, egg, and cracker coating.

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

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato mixture

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then press them through a sieve.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the potato puree with butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the egg and mix well.

Shape and coat

  1. Roll the mixture into small flat balls.

  2. Dip each ball in beaten egg, then coat with crumbled crackers.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in hot lard until light brown, then 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the soft, starchy body of the balls once mashed into a smooth puree.
Egg
Binds the cooled potato mixture so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the potato puree for a softer interior.
Crumbled crackers
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried in hot lard.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the coating brown more evenly.

The step that matters

Allow the mixture to cool before adding the egg. If the puree is still hot, the egg can scramble or thin out, so the balls may not bind well and can fall apart during frying.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, sugar, egg. 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.

More potato balls recipes

Fried 12Sweet 9English 7Baked 6Oyster 4Ragout 4 See all 126 →

You might also like

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