Name: Potatoes a LA Maitre D'hotel
Ingredients: 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley; 4 tablespoonfuls of gravy; 2 tablespoonfuls of lemon-juice; 6 potatoes allow 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley; 3 persons; pepper; salt

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

Potatoes a LA Maitre D'hotel

3 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

Wash the potatoes clean.
Boil them in salt and water according to recipe No. 1138.
When done, drain them and let them cool.
Peel and cut the potatoes into thick slices; if slices are too thin, they will break in the sauce.

Make the sauce and serve

Put 2 oz. of butter into a stewpan with the pepper, salt, gravy, and parsley. Mix these ingredients well together.
Put the potatoes into the stewpan. Shake the potatoes two or three times so they are well covered with the sauce.
When the mixture is quite hot through, squeeze in the lemon juice.
Serve.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,122 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned 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: Form the body of the dish; thick slices hold their shape when coated in the sauce.
Butter (in the method): Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.
Gravy: Supplies savoury depth and moisture to the sauce that coats the potatoes.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce, added at the end so it stays fresh.
Parsley: Contributes fresh, herbal aroma and colour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cut the potatoes into thick slices. Thin slices are fragile and break apart when tossed in the sauce, so cutting them thick keeps them intact.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Lemonthe original
Limeabout as good a flavor fit

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