Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓
Potato Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Mash the boiled potatoes very fine with a little salt.
Mix the mashed potatoes with the flour.
Add enough milk to form a dough and beat it with a spoon.
Stir in a little yeast.
Set the mixture before the fire to rise.
Shape and bake
Once risen, divide the dough into cakes the size of a muffin.
Bake the cakes until golden brown.
Serve
Cut open and butter them while hot.
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.
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Potato + milktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and milk 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
- Mealy boiled potatoes
- Provide starch and body, giving the cakes a soft, tender crumb.
- Flour
- Adds structure and bulk so the mashed potato holds together as a dough.
- Yeast
- Produces gas as it ferments, causing the dough to rise and become light.
- Milk
- Adds moisture to bind the flour and potato into a workable dough.
The step that matters
Letting the dough rise. Yeast needs warmth and time to ferment; if the dough is too cold or rises too briefly, the cakes stay dense instead of light.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Potatothe original
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Parsnipfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk. 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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