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Potato Patties

A baked potato patty made with boiled potatoes, butter, milk, eggs, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until tender, then pass them through a sieve.

  2. Mix the sieved potatoes with melted butter until creamy.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk and pour it into the potato mixture, stirring until smooth.

  2. Place the mixture over low heat and stir in 2 beaten eggs.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool, then add the yolks of the remaining eggs.

  4. Whisk the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter small patty pans and coat them with bread crumbs.

  2. Pour the batter into the pans and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with fish or as a vegetable side dish.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mealy potatoes
Starch that becomes light and fluffy when mashed, forming the body of the patties.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the sieved potato creamy and smooth.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the potato mixture, keeping the batter loose.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the patties, and the whites lighten the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that makes the batter rise and bake light. Overmixing or stirring vigorously knocks out that air, leaving dense patties.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

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