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Fried Potatoes

Fried potatoes are sliced boiled potatoes coated in flour and fried in salt pork fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Fried Potatoes

Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Fried Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Fry the salt pork in a pan until perfectly crisp, taking care to fry steadily without scorching.

  2. Slice the cold boiled potatoes lengthwise into three pieces each.

  3. Lightly dredge the potato slices with flour using a fine sifter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat the fat from the pork in the pan and add a few potato slices at a time.

  2. Turn the potatoes with a fork until they are well and evenly browned.

  3. Transfer the finished potatoes to a serving dish and keep covered and hot.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pork and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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

Salt pork
Renders fat for frying and adds savory, salty flavor to the potatoes.
Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dish, with a starchy interior that softens as the slices fry.
Flour
Light dusting helps the potato surfaces brown evenly and become crisp.

The step that matters

Fry steadily without scorching the salt pork. Fat rendered over moderate heat becomes clear and crisp, and it is the frying medium for the potatoes. If the pork scorches, the fat turns bitter and dark, and the potatoes taking on that flavor and color will spoil the dish.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Turnipfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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