Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Potatoes

A creamy stew of boiled potatoes simmered with butter, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the thickening

  1. Mix the corn starch or flour with a little cold milk in a small bowl until smooth.

Make the stew

  1. Combine the cream and boiling water in a saucepan and heat over medium heat.

  2. When the cream and water mixture boils, stir in the thickening and let it boil briefly.

  3. Add the butter, stirring until smooth, then sprinkle in the salt, mace, and black pepper to taste.

  4. Add the potatoes, stir gently, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes until the potatoes are softened.

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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the stew a smooth, full texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel as it is stirred in.
Corn starch or flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the stew a smooth, body-rich consistency.
Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk of the stew and soften while simmering.

The step that matters

Stirring in the thickening. Starch added to liquid can clump if not mixed smooth first. Pre-mixing it with cold liquid and adding it to a boiling mixture lets the starch granules disperse and swell evenly, so the stew thickens without lumps.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, cream, corn, 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.

More potato stew recipes

Pork and Sweet 4Irish 3 See all 26 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes