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Boiled Potatoes

A simple dish of boiled potatoes served with a milk, flour, butter, and salt sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Boiled Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel old potatoes.

  2. Soak new potatoes in cold water for 1–2 hours before cooking.

Boil and drain

  1. Place the potatoes in boiling water with 1 teaspoon of salt for every quart of water.

  2. Once cooked, drain the water and shake the potatoes near an open window or door.

  3. Return the potatoes to the heat for a few moments, then serve.

  4. Leave 5–6 small new potatoes in the kettle.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Break the potatoes with a potato masher.

  2. Add ½ pint of milk and 2 tablespoons of flour mixed with 2 ounces of butter and ½ teaspoon of salt.

  3. Thicken the mixture and pour it over the potatoes before serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 dish's main body; their starch cooks soft and mashes into the sauce.
Milk
Provides liquid and creaminess that loosens the mashed potatoes into a pourable sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture as its starch swells when heated, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, smoothing the texture and carrying flavour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid long enough for its starch to swell fully; otherwise the sauce stays pasty and tastes raw.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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