Name: Parkinson Potatoes
Ingredients: 2 or 3 fine raw potatoes; 3 slices of bacon, ground fine; 1 small onion, minced; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 2 tablespoons parsley, chopped; ¼ teaspoon paprika; cold meat (chicken, ham, sweetbreads, tongue, or cold stewed oysters), ground (equal to half the amount of potatoes)

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Parkinson Potatoes

Ingredients

2 or 3 fine raw potatoes
3 slices of bacon, ground fine
1 small onion, minced
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
¼ teaspoon paprika
cold meat (chicken, ham, sweetbreads, tongue, or cold stewed oysters), ground (equal to half the amount of potatoes)

Directions

Prepare

Peel the potatoes and grind them using a meat grinder.
Fry the ground bacon until crispy in a large skillet.
Add the seasoned potatoes (with onion, salt, pepper, parsley, and paprika) to the skillet.
Toss the potatoes in the skillet until cooked through.
Add the ground cold meat and mix well.

Shape and brown

Shape the mixture into a loaf.
Brown the loaf in the skillet.

Serve

Turn the loaf onto a hot serving dish, brown side up, garnish.
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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
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: Form the starchy bulk of the loaf, binding it and giving a soft interior.
Bacon: Adds fat and savory flavor, and its rendered fat helps the loaf brown.
Cold meat: Adds protein and substance, giving the loaf a firmer, meatier body.
Onion: Adds aromatic flavor that deepens as it cooks into the loaf.

The step that matters

Browning the loaf in the skillet. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs a hot, dry surface and enough fat. Pressing the loaf into shape and leaving it undisturbed lets a crust form instead of steaming it.

Swap the onion

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

Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

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