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Fried Potatoes

Fried potatoes made from boiled potatoes, flour, butter, salt, and hot fat, cooked by sautéing or deep frying.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato cakes

  1. Make cakes from cold, boiled potatoes.

  2. Dip the cakes in flour.

  3. Sauté the cakes in butter until golden brown.

Make the potato balls

  1. Parboil potato balls.

  2. Dip the parboiled balls in hot fat.

  3. Fry the balls until delicately brown.

Fry the cut potatoes

  1. Cut potatoes into slices, cubes, or latticed slices.

  2. Fry the cut potatoes in deep fat until golden.

  3. Drain on brown paper.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cold, boiled potatoes
Form the main body of the cakes and balls and give them their soft interior.
Flour
Forms a dry coating on the cakes that helps them brown evenly in the fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour while the cakes sauté to golden brown.
Hot fat
Cooks the coated balls and cut potatoes quickly, browning the surface and crisping it.

The step that matters

Fry the parboiled balls in hot fat until delicately brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly. If it is too cool, the potato soaks up oil and turns greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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