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Potato Balls

Deep-fried balls made from boiled potatoes, butter, eggs, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Balls

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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato base

  1. Rub the potatoes through a sieve or mash them smoothly.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Season the butter with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the potatoes and stir until heated through.

  4. Mix in one beaten egg to form a paste.

  5. Let it cool on a plate.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the mixture into balls.

  2. Brush the balls with the remaining beaten egg.

  3. Cover the balls with bread crumbs.

  4. Fry the balls in hot oil.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the balls their body and soft interior.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the potato mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture into a paste and form a coating that helps the crumbs stick.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when the balls are fried.

The step that matters

Let it cool on a plate. Warm potato paste is soft and sticky, so cooling it lets it firm up enough to roll into balls that hold their shape in the oil.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, pepper. 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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