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Stewed Potatoes

A simple dish of boiled potatoes simmered with flour, butter, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and dice the potatoes.

  2. Soak them in cold water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain and cover with boiling water; boil for 10 minutes after boiling starts.

  4. Drain all the water and place the potatoes in a double boiler.

Stew and serve

  1. Dredge with flour and add butter and milk.

  2. Cover and cook gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then serve in a heated dish.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter 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 main body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook and absorb the milk.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce that coats the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour through the stewed milk.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that the potatoes stew in and thickens with the flour.

The step that matters

Cook gently in the double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat keeps the milk from scorching or boiling over and splitting, so the flour thickens into a smooth sauce rather than a lumpy or burnt one.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, 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.

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