Skip to main content
Breakfast

Breakfast PoTAToES

A simple dish of sautéed potatoes simmered in stock, seasoned with pepper, salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

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

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Breakfast PoTAToES

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold potatoes into pieces.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

Cook

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and add the seasoned potatoes.

  2. Cook for a moment, then pour in the soup stock.

  3. Cover and simmer for a few moments 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that becomes tender and soft during cooking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the potatoes brown lightly in the pan.
Soup stock
Adds moisture and savory flavor as the potatoes simmer.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, parsley, lemon, 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.

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes