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New Potatoes

Boiled navy potatoes served with butter, chives or parsley, cream, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and chive work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 611 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and dry

  1. Boil the navy potatoes with the skin on until done.

  2. Peel the potatoes and dry them on the stove.

Season and serve

  1. Season with coarse sea salt or cover with melted butter and chopped chives or parsley.

  2. For a nice dressing, add a little cream, black pepper, and salt, or cover with cream sauce.

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 + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Navy potatoes
Provide the starchy base that carries the seasoning and dressing.
Melted butter
Adds richness and carries herb and salt flavour over the potatoes.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing.
Chives or parsley
Add fresh aroma and a green, herbal note.
Black pepper
Adds a mild, sharp aroma to the dressing.

The step that matters

Dry the potatoes after peeling. Surface moisture dilutes butter and cream and stops seasoning from clinging. Drying the potatoes on the stove lets the fat and seasoning coat the surface evenly and taste more concentrated.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Onionfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivethe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, cream, 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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