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Potato Cakes

A fried batter of grated potatoes, egg, flour, salt, sugar, lemon peel, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and grate the raw potatoes.

  2. Place the grated potatoes in a sieve to drain off the liquid.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the drained potato pulp with the egg, flour, salt, sugar, and grated lemon peel to form a thick batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat butter in a pan and fry the batter in small cakes, browning lightly on both sides.

  2. Serve very 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.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Raw potatoes
Provide the starchy base that forms the body of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the grated potato and flour so the batter holds together while frying.
Flour
Thickens the batter and helps the cakes hold their shape.
Butter
Fries the cakes, adding richness and encouraging light browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Draining the grated potatoes. Excess liquid dilutes the batter and keeps the cakes from binding, so they can fall apart or steam instead of browning. Draining well helps them hold together and crisp in the pan.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

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