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French Fried Potatoes

French fried potatoes are sliced potatoes fried in olive oil and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,458 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

French Fried Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and cut them in half lengthwise, then cut each half into three pieces.

  2. Soak the potato pieces in ice water for about 1 hour, then dry them with a towel.

Fry

  1. Heat the olive oil in a frying kettle until very hot.

  2. Place the potatoes in a frying basket and slowly lower it into the hot oil, lifting it slightly if the oil threatens to overflow.

  3. Cook the potatoes for about 10 minutes, being careful not to let them brown too much.

  4. Remove the basket from the oil and place it on a plate.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle the potatoes with coarse sea salt, shake well, and 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.

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 + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starchy interior becomes fluffy when fried, while the outside crisps into a golden shell.
Olive oil
Hot oil cooks the potatoes quickly and transfers heat evenly, drying the surface to crispness.

The step that matters

Soak and dry the potato pieces. Soaking washes away surface starch so fries do not stick together or brown unevenly, and thorough drying prevents water from spattering in hot oil and keeps the exterior crisp.

“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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