Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Fried Potatoes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Peel the potatoes and cut them into very thin slices, almost shavings.
Fry
Heat oil, butter, or fat in a frying pan to 2 inches deep until very hot but not burning.
Fry a few slices at a time, moving them about with a skimmer.
Once they are a nice brown color, remove them and sprinkle with salt.
Serve
Serve separately or over broiled meat.
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.
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Starch that fries to a crisp brown outer layer while the inside stays tender.
- Oil, butter, or fat
- Conducts heat evenly and fries the slices, adding richness and browning.
The step that matters
Keep the fat very hot but not burning. Hot fat seals the potato surface quickly, so slices crisp rather than soak up oil. If the fat is too cool, the slices absorb grease and turn soggy; if it burns, they taste bitter and dark before cooking through.
“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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