Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Potatoes

Boiled potatoes served with a milk, flour, and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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

  2. For new potatoes, scrape the skin off before boiling. Leave 5–6 small ones in the kettle.

Boil and drain

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

  2. Drain the water and shake the potatoes near an open window or door.

  3. Return the potatoes to the heat for a few moments before serving.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Break the small potatoes with a potato masher, then add ½ pint of milk, 1 tablespoon of flour mixed with 2 ounces of butter, and ½ teaspoon of salt.

  2. 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
Provide the starchy body of the dish, which softens when boiled.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to the mashed small potatoes and sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk mixture as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, smoothing the flour-thickened sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture. Flour must be cooked in the hot liquid so its starch swells and thickens the sauce; adding it raw or undercooking it leaves a floury, thin result.

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.

More boiled potatoes recipes

in Lard 3Plain 3 See all 222 →

You might also like

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