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Plain Potato Fritters

A fried potato batter made with grated potatoes, flour, egg, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Plain Potato Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the potatoes into a bowl.

  2. Add flour, beaten egg, sugar, and salt; stir rapidly.

  3. Continue stirring in a cool place.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat oil in a deep saucepan to about 2 inches deep.

  2. Drop the mixture by tablespoonfuls into the hot oil.

  3. Fry until golden and crisp, about 3 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provide the bulk of the fritter and its starchy interior once grated and fried.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps bind the grated potato into a batter that holds its shape.
Egg
Binds the mixture together and helps the fritters hold their form while frying.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the exterior brown in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Keep the oil hot and fry in batches. Grated potato releases water and starch that can make the oil cool down and the fritters greasy and soggy. Hot oil sears the outside quickly, so the fritters turn crisp rather than absorbing oil.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, sugar. 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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