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Potato Pancakes

A skillet dish of grated potatoes mixed with eggs, onion, salt, and seasoning, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel, wash, and grate the raw Irish potatoes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the grated potatoes with coarse sea salt, eggs, chopped onion, and Lahmann's naehrsalz.

Cook

  1. Heat coconut oil or butter in a skillet over medium-high heat.

  2. Spoon the mixture into the skillet to form small, round, thin cakes.

  3. Cook until golden 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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + coconuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  4. Egg + coconuttop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Raw irish potatoes
Provide the starch and bulk that form the bulk of the pancake.
Eggs
Bind the grated potato together and help the cakes hold their shape.
Onion
Adds aroma and savory flavor to the potato mixture.
Coconut oil or butter
Conducts heat in the skillet and promotes browning on the cake surfaces.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Grated potato releases water and starch, so cakes can steam or stick if the pan is not hot enough. Medium-high heat with enough fat lets the surface brown and crisp before the centre is cooked through.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Pumpkinfits about as well
  3. Coconutthe original
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, onion. 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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