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Creamed Potatoes

Creamed potatoes are diced cooked potatoes simmered in a butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper sauce.

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

Creamed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat, being careful not to scorch it.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and pepper, and stir until smooth.

  3. Cook on the stove until it bubbles.

  4. Add the milk and boil for two minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. If the sauce is too thick, add more milk.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the diced potatoes and reheat.

  2. Garnish with parsley.

  3. Serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour while the flour is cooked into it.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as it cooks and bubbles.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Diced cooked potatoes
Form the body of the dish, absorbing the sauce and becoming soft and creamy when reheated.

The step that matters

Adding the milk and boiling while stirring. Flour thickens milk only when the starch granules swell in heated liquid. Stirring constantly keeps the sauce smooth and prevents lumps from forming at the bottom of the pan.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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

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