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Potato Balls

Fried balls of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, eggs, and seasonings, coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 mixture

  1. Season the mashed potatoes with white pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Beat the potatoes smoothly with the butter and the yolk of one egg.

  3. Form the mixture into round balls about 1.5 inches in diameter.

Coat and fry

  1. Dust the balls with flour and brush them with a beaten egg.

  2. Toss the balls in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot fat until they are a pale brown color.

Serve

  1. Drain on porous paper and serve hot, garnished with parsley.

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

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the body of the balls, giving a soft, moist interior.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the potato texture.
Eggs
The yolk enriches and binds the mixture; the beaten egg helps the crumbs adhere.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until pale brown. Fat that is hot enough sets the crumb coating quickly, so the outside crisps before the potato interior absorbs excess oil. Fat that is too cool makes the balls greasy and can cause the coating to fall off.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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