Skip to main content
Main

Tossed Potatoes

Tossed potatoes are boiled, peeled, diced, and tossed in a cream, butter, flour, pepper, and salt mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Tossed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in their jackets until tender.

  2. Peel the potatoes and cut them into small pieces.

Coat and heat

  1. In a pan, combine the cream, butter, flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Toss the potato pieces in the mixture.

  3. Heat until hot and well coated.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and carry the creamy coating.
Cream
Provides moisture and richness that forms the coating sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the sauce and helps it coat the potatoes smoothly.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it clings to the potato pieces.

The step that matters

Heat until hot and well coated. Flour in the cream needs enough heat to thicken fully; if the mixture stays too cool, it stays thin and runny and fails to cling to the potatoes.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes