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Fried Potatoes with Eggs

Fried potatoes served with beaten eggs mixed in just before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Fried Potatoes with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Fry the potatoes in good butter until brown.

  3. Beat 1 or 2 eggs.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir the beaten eggs into the potatoes just before serving.

  2. Do not leave the mixture on the fire after adding the eggs to prevent them from hardening.

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).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the main body of the dish and brown well in butter.
Good butter
Fat that fries the potatoes, adding richness and browning them.
Eggs
Set into the warm potatoes, binding them and adding richness.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs and removing from heat. Egg proteins set and toughen when overheated, so the eggs turn hard and rubbery if the mixture stays on the fire after they are stirred in. Stir them in just before serving and take the pan off the heat so they stay soft.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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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