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Potatoes with Milk Sauce

Boiled potatoes served with a sauce made from milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Potatoes with Milk Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until done.

  2. Add salt just before they are done to prevent them from falling apart.

  3. Pour off the water.

Serve

  1. Make a milk sauce and pour it over the potatoes before serving.

  2. Make plenty of sauce, as good, mealy potatoes absorb it well.

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. 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

Potatoes
Starchy flesh that cooks soft and mealy, absorbing the milk sauce well.
Milk
Forms the liquid sauce that coats and moistens the cooked potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat to the milk sauce, giving it richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Add salt just before the potatoes are done. Salting near the end of boiling, rather than early, helps keep the potato surface firm so the potatoes do not fall apart.

“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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