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Potato Pancakes

A fried dish of grated potatoes mixed with eggs, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Grate the potatoes and drain them on a sieve.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. In a bowl, mix the grated potatoes, egg yolks, flour, baking powder, and salt.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a skillet over medium-high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot lard and fry until brown on both sides.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Egg and flour 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
Form the bulk of the pancake, giving body and a starchy, tender interior when fried.
Eggs
Yolks bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it and help the pancakes puff slightly.
All-purpose flour
Absorbs excess moisture and helps the grated potato hold together while frying.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, adding lightness to the pancakes.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding rather than stirring keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites, which keeps the batter light. Overmixing deflates the foam and produces dense pancakes.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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