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Browned Potatoes

A dish of small potatoes browned in lard and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Browned Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the small potatoes.

  2. Cook them in boiling salted water until tender.

  3. Drain and peel the potatoes.

Brown the potatoes

  1. Heat 3 tablespoons of lard in a frying pan over medium heat.

  2. Add 1½ tablespoons of butter to the hot lard.

  3. Add enough potatoes to cover the bottom of the pan.

  4. Cook until brown, turning to brown all 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 + 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

Small potatoes
Boiling makes them tender inside, and their peeled surface browns in the hot fat.
Lard
Fat that conducts heat evenly and helps the potato surfaces brown and crisp.
Butter
Adds milk solids that brown and contribute a nutty, rich flavor.

The step that matters

Add enough potatoes to cover the bottom of the pan. Potatoes need direct contact with hot fat to brown. If the pan is crowded, the potatoes steam instead, releasing moisture that prevents browning. Spreading them in a single layer keeps the fat hot enough for a golden crust.

“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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