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Fried Potatoes

Fried potatoes are sliced or cubed boiled potatoes fried in butter until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Prepare

  1. Cut cold boiled potatoes into cakes and dip in flour.

  2. Parboil potato balls, then dip in hot fat and fry until delicately brown.

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

Cook and serve

  1. Sauté in butter until golden brown.

  2. Fry in deep fat until golden, then drain on brown paper.

  3. 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
Provide the starchy base that becomes crisp and golden when fried.
Flour
Coats the potato surface so it browns evenly and crisps when fried.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour while helping the potatoes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Dip in flour before frying. A thin, even flour coating helps the surface crisp and brown rather than steam. Excess flour can leave a pasty layer, so shake off the extra before frying.

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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