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Fried Potatoes with Eggs

Fried potatoes with eggs is a simple dish of sliced boiled potatoes fried in butter and mixed with beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Fry the potatoes

  1. Slice the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Fry the potatoes in good butter until brown.

Add the eggs

  1. Beat 1 or 2 eggs in a bowl.

  2. Stir the eggs into the potatoes just before serving.

  3. Do not leave the mixture on the fire after adding the eggs.

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

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and brown in the fat as they fry.
Good butter
Fat that fries the potatoes golden brown and adds rich flavour.
Eggs
Set into soft curds when heated, binding the dish and adding richness.

The step that matters

Leave the mixture off the heat after adding the eggs. Egg proteins set quickly when heated. If the mixture stays on the fire, the eggs overcook, turning rubbery, dry and grainy instead of soft.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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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