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French Fried Potatoes

Thinly 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

Prepare

  1. Slice the potatoes thinly or cut them into blocks or rhomboidal shapes.

  2. Soak the pieces in cold water for one hour.

  3. Dry the potato slices quickly on a towel.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a frying pan with very hot lard.

  2. Drop the slices into the hot lard and fry until done.

  3. Remove them with a skimmer and place in a colander set on a tin plate in the warm oven.

  4. Once all potatoes are fried, 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
Provide the starchy body of the fries, which soften inside while the outside crisps in the fat.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the potatoes a crisp, golden surface and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Dry the potato slices quickly on a towel. Surface water turns to steam when it hits hot fat, causing spattering and greasy, soft fries. Drying the pieces lets the surface brown and crisp instead.

“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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