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Country Potato Griddle Cake

A yeast‑leavened potato dough formed into cakes and fried with lard, seasoned with garlic.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and garlic are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,517 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Country Potato Griddle Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in a little milk.

  2. Cook and wash the potatoes, then mash them.

  3. Add enough flour to match the weight of the potatoes, along with lard and a little salt.

  4. Knead the mixture well with the yeast.

  5. Set the dough aside for 30 minutes.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to a thickness of ½ inch.

  2. Cut the rolled dough into hand‑sized pieces.

  3. Allow the pieces to rest for 10‑15 minutes.

  4. Fry the pieces in a little lard until they are a nice red color.

  5. Rub the fried cakes with a little garlic.

  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. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + garlictop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Form the bulk of the dough and give the cakes their soft, moist body.
Yeast
Leavens the dough so it rises and becomes lighter during the rest.
Flour
Adds structure to the dough so it can be rolled and cut into pieces.
Lard
Adds richness to the dough and fries the cakes to a golden, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Fry the pieces in a little lard until they are a nice red color.. Frying over moderate heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction while the interior cooks through. Too little heat leaves the cakes pale and greasy; too much burns the outside before the centre is hot.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

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