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To Boil New Potatoes

Boiled new potatoes with butter, cooked until tender and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

To Boil New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the potatoes thoroughly and rub off the skins with a coarse cloth.

Boil and dry

  1. Place the potatoes in boiling salted water.

  2. Boil until tender, checking with a fork.

  3. Drain the water and let the potatoes sit by the fire with the lid partially uncovered until dry.

Serve

  1. Transfer the potatoes to a hot serving dish and add the butter on top.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

New potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a soft, tender interior.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat coating that carries flavour over the potatoes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the potatoes take up flavour as they boil.

The step that matters

Boil until tender, checking with a fork. Potatoes are done when starch granules have swelled and the interior yields easily. Testing with a fork avoids undercooking, which leaves a firm centre, and overcooking, which makes the flesh break apart and turn watery.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, 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.

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