Chapter Title: French Fries

Book Title: Molecular Gastronomy

Book Subtitle: Exploring the Science of Flavor
Book Author(s): Hervé This
Published by: Columbia University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/10.7312/this13312.59

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55
French Fries
A new kind of potato for frying, packaged raw, absorbs less oil than frozen
fries.

m a n y o f t h e f r i e s s e r v e d t o d a y in restaurants in France come out

of a vacuum-sealed bag. Home cooks still prefer to use fresh potatoes because
they soak up less oil. Will traditional practice give way to the new technique
of packaging sliced potatoes raw under a controlled atmosphere, developed
in 1997 by Patrick Varoquaux and his colleagues at the Institut National de la
Recherche Agronomique (inra) station in Montfavet?
In cafeterias and restaurants at least there is no avoiding the superior con-
venience of precut and processed potatoes because the large volumes con-
sumed take extensive advance preparation. Another complication is that po-
tatoes darken upon exposure to the air once they have been cut up because
slicing releases enzymes and associated substrates that otherwise are shut up
in separate compartments in the cells of the potato. In the presence of oxygen
these molecules react and form brown compounds similar to the ones that
cause our skin to tan in the summer.
Before Varoquaux’s work, this enzymatic browning prompted the makers
of prepared fries to offer precooked products: The potato sticks were peeled
and sliced, then dried and deep-fried in oil (often palm oil, cheaper than other
kinds), and finally frozen. For the final cooking they could either be deep-fried
again, in which case the microscopic fissures created during freezing caused
them to absorb a lot of oil; or reheated in the oven, in which case they ended
up being too dry.

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 Atmosphere of Fries

In their search for ways to remedy these defects, the inra chemists experi-
mented with the idea of packaging raw sliced potatoes under controlled atmo-
spheres—what are now known in Europe as quatrième gamme fries—taking
care to monitor signs of browning during fabrication.
To minimize browning, a number of steps are followed. First, the potatoes
must be carefully peeled, preferably under a stream of water, so that the cel-
lular structure is not damaged. For this reason the blades of the stainless steel
knives used to cut the potatoes into sticks must be kept as sharp as possible.
Next the individual sticks are kept at a temperature of about 4°c (39°f) so
that the metabolism of the intact cells is slowed down as much as possible.
After draining by either centrifugation or ventilation, the potatoes are treated
with an inert gas, in the absence of oxygen, in a perfectly sealed packet. In this
way the sticks can be preserved for 10 days, still at 4°c (39°f), without altera-
tion (in the course of storage, however, the tissues of the potato accumulate
sugars that cause the fries to darken during cooking, by reactions analogous
to those that brown the crust of bread). The flavor and texture of fries that are
cooked later nonetheless resemble the flavor and texture of fresh French fries:
The proportion of oil absorbed is similar, much less than in the case of frozen
potatoes that are deep-fried.

Deep-Frying Considered

How should French fries be cooked? On this point cooks are apt to disagree,
for each chef has his or her own method. One needs to ask what one is looking
for in a plate of French fries and then rationally to examine which procedures
allow this expectation to be satisfied.
Few connoisseurs will quarrel with the opinion that good French fries must
be tender at the center, with minimal greasiness, and that they should be crispy
without being overly brown. To achieve this result we must recognize that deep-
frying involves a diffusion of heat from the outside inward, with two principal
consequences: the formation of the crust and the cooking of the interior.
Potatoes are composed of cells that contain mostly water and starch gran-
ules. When the heat reaches the center of the fries by conduction, some cells
are dissociated as the starch granules release their long molecules into the

192 | investigations a nd mo d e l s

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heated cellular water. With the complete evaporation of this water a crust is
produced on the surface of the fries.
If one cooks a potato stick into which a thermocouple has been inserted
(a more rapid and more reliable way of measuring temperature than with a
thermometer), one finds that the interior heats up very slowly: Even when the
temperature of the oil is 180°c (356°f), the temperature in the center reaches
85°c (185°f) only after several minutes, for the potato is thermically inert. In
other words, if the oil is too hot in the first round of frying, the surface will
burn before the inside is cooked.
Conversely, the oil must not be too cold to begin with, for then the crust
will be slow to form and the fries will soak up oil. In practice, seven minutes
of cooking at a temperature of 180°c (356°f) yields good results for fries mea-
suring 12 millimeters (about half an inch) thick. A second round of cooking
in oil heated to a slightly higher temperature, 200°c (392°f), produces perfect
fries; remove them from the oil when they have turned just the right golden
brown color.

French Fries | 193

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