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Potato Cheesecakes

A fried cake made from mashed potatoes, cheese, eggs, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Melt the butter and mix it with the mashed potatoes.

  2. Add the cheese, flour, seasoning, mustard, and 1 beaten egg. Mix well.

  3. Form the mixture into cakes.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the second egg.

  2. Dip the cakes into the beaten egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the cakes in oil or butter until brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with tomato sauce and green vegetables.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the cakes and hold them together with a soft, moist texture.
Cheese
Adds rich flavour and helps the cakes brown and firm up when fried.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and give the outer coating a set structure that holds the crumbs.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the cakes brown in the pan.
Fine wheat flour
Absorbs moisture from the potatoes and helps the cakes keep their shape.

The step that matters

Dip the cakes into the beaten egg and bread crumbs. If the cakes are wet or the coating is thin, the crumbs will not stick and may fall off in the pan. Dry the shaped cakes slightly and coat them evenly so the egg sets into a firm crust during frying.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cheese, butter, egg, bread, wheat, flour):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cheese, butter, egg, bread, wheat, 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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