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French Potatoes

French potatoes are sliced, soaked, dried, fried in lard, and salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

French Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and cut the potatoes into orange-like sections, then soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the potatoes and lay them on a cloth to dry.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the potatoes in boiling lard until golden brown.

  2. Remove and place on brown paper, then sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

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 + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy interior that turns soft and fluffy while the outside crisps.
Lard or butter
Fat that conducts heat for frying and helps the surface brown to golden.

The step that matters

Drying the potatoes before frying. Surface water boils off in hot fat and causes spattering and steaming, which keeps the exterior from crisping. Thoroughly drying the cut potatoes lets the surface brown properly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef. 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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