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Potato Fillets

Fried potato pieces cooked in lard and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Fillets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes, then cut them into quarter-inch squares and soak in cold water until needed.

Fry

  1. Drop the potatoes into boiling lard and cook until nearly done, then remove with a skimmer and drain.

  2. Reheat the lard, return the potatoes, and fry until fully cooked and puffed. Serve hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
Form the main body of the fillets, becoming fluffy inside as their starch cooks.
Egg
Binds the coating so it sets and holds together during frying.
Bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the fillets.
Lard or drippings
Conducts heat to cook the potatoes and gives them a golden, crisp surface.

The step that matters

Reheat the lard before returning the potatoes. The fat must be hot again before the potatoes go back in. Hot fat seals the surface quickly and crisps it, while cooler fat soaks in and leaves the potatoes greasy and pale.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, bread. 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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