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Potato Chips

Thinly sliced potatoes fried until crisp, served with salt and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Potato Chips

Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Potato Chips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Shave raw potatoes into thin slices using a potato slicer.

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

  3. Dry the slices between towels.

Fry and season

  1. Fry the dried slices in deep fat until golden brown.

  2. Drain on soft paper and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

Shaped potatoes and serving

  1. For fancy shapes, cut raw potatoes into hearts or crescents using cookie cutters after slicing.

  2. Fry or boil the shaped potatoes in salted water.

  3. Serve with cream sauce.

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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw potatoes
Form the main body of the chips, becoming crisp on the outside and fluffy inside when fried.
Deep fat
Cooks the slices quickly and drives off moisture, producing a golden, crisp surface.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the surface of the fried chips, adding flavour that contrasts with the potato.

The step that matters

Dry the slices between towels. Surface water on the slices cools the frying fat and turns steam into sogginess. Thorough drying lets the fat bubble vigorously, so the chips crisp instead of steaming.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce. 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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