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Fried Potatoes

Fried potatoes are sliced potatoes coated in flour and fried in lard or dripping until light brown, then salted and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Slice the potatoes into ½-inch thick slices.

  2. Pat the slices dry with a cloth.

  3. Coat the potato slices in flour.

Fry

  1. Heat the lard or dripping in a deep pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the potatoes until they are a light brown color.

  3. Drain the fried potatoes on paper towels.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and serve with melted butter in a sauce boat.

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

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, turning soft inside while the outside crisps when fried.
All-purpose flour
Forms a coating that helps the surface brown and crisp during frying.
Lard or dripping
Frying fat that conducts heat and gives the potatoes a rich flavour and crisp surface.

The step that matters

Pat the slices dry. Surface moisture cools hot fat and causes splattering and steaming, so the potatoes absorb more fat and crisp less. Dry slices brown more evenly.

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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