Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Fried Cakes

A sweet batter of potatoes, sugar, and spices fried into golden cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Potato Fried Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the hot potatoes, sugar, and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the egg, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and vanilla. Mix until well combined.

Cook

  1. Fry spoonfuls of the batter in a hot skillet 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Hot potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that give the batter a soft, tender body.
Egg
Binds the batter so the pancakes hold together while frying.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once it is cooked.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter so the pancakes puff slightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Frying in a hot skillet. If the skillet is not hot enough, the pancakes absorb oil and turn greasy before browning. A hot pan sets the outside quickly so the centre cooks through without burning the surface.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, nutmeg, vanilla):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, nutmeg, vanilla. 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.

More potato pancakes recipes

German 6 See all 62 →

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes