Name: Pommes Maitre d'Hotel
Ingredients: 6 cold boiled potatoes; ½ cup milk; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; a pinch of grated nutmeg

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,118 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare

Cut the cold boiled potatoes into pieces.
Place them in a well-buttered paper bag.

Bake

Add the milk, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and nutmeg.
Seal the bag and cook for 15 minutes in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together81,222 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + milktop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,611 recipes

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

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, soaking up the milk and butter as they heat.
Milk: Adds moisture so the potatoes turn creamy rather than dry while baking.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the potatoes feel smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

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

Thymebetter flavor fit
Dillbetter flavor fit
Marjoramabout as good a flavor fit
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, pepper, butter, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.