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Saratoga Potatoes

Thinly sliced potatoes fried in fat and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Saratoga Potatoes

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 ↓

Saratoga Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly using a potato slicer.

  2. Soak the slices in ice water for at least one hour.

  3. Drain the slices and dry them thoroughly between two towels.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat enough drippings, lard, or butter in a pan until very hot but not scorched.

  2. Fry the potato slices briskly, stirring with an egg whisk to prevent sticking.

  3. Once they are a delicate brown, transfer them to a hot colander.

  4. Sprinkle with salt while cooking and serve in a napkin or as a garnish.

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. 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

Very large potatoes
Starch provides the body of the crisp slices and the tender interior.
Drippings, lard, or butter
Fat conducts heat for frying and gives the slices rich flavor and browning.
Coarse sea salt
Salt seasons the surface of the slices as they cook.

The step that matters

Dry the slices thoroughly before frying. Surface water cools the hot fat and turns the frying into steaming, so the slices soften and stick instead of crisping. Drying after the ice-water soak removes that water.

“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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