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French Fried Potatoes

A dish of sliced potatoes fried in lard and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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French Fried Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and slice them lengthwise into ¼ inch thick slices.

  2. Soak the slices in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the slices from the water and dry them with a cloth.

Fry

  1. Fry the slices in hot lard (400°F / 200°C).

  2. Remove the slices with a skimmer before they are fully cooked.

  3. Drain the slices.

  4. Return the slices to the hot lard to finish frying.

  5. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and serve hot.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch provides the bulk and the fluffy interior once cooked in hot fat.
Lard
Hot fat conducts heat quickly and gives the fries their crisp, golden surface and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Remove the slices before they are fully cooked. Pulling the fries out early lets the interior finish cooking off the heat without over-browning. Returning them to hot fat then crisps the surface, so the result is soft inside and crisp outside.

“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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