Name: Maitre D'hotel Potatoes
Ingredients: 2 cups potato cubes (½ inch); 3 tablespoons butter; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; ½ teaspoon finely chopped parsley; ¼ teaspoon salt; pepper to taste

Why it works: Potato and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 2,855 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: fish

Directions

Cook potato cubes in boiling, salted water until soft.
Drain the potatoes and add butter, lemon juice, parsley, salt, and pepper.
Toss to combine and serve with fish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Potato + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,118 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together8,303 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 (in the method): Form the bulk of the dish, providing starch and a soft, tender texture.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the potatoes and carrying flavour.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour and balances richness.

“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.