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French Fried Potatoes

Thin strips of potato 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. Peel the raw potatoes and cut them into long, narrow strips.

  2. Soak the potato strips in cold salted water for at least 1 hour.

  3. Drain the potatoes well.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat deep lard in a frying pan until hot.

  2. Fry the potatoes in the hot lard until they are a nice brown color.

  3. Dredge the fried potatoes with coarse sea salt before serving.

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

Raw potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the fries, which cooks to a fluffy interior inside a crisp exterior.
Deep lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the potato surface its golden-brown color and crisp texture.

The step that matters

Drain the potatoes well. Any water left on the strips turns to steam when they hit hot fat, which spatters and lowers the fat temperature, so the fries soak up grease instead of crisping.

“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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