Skip to main content
Main

Potatoes Stewed

A creamy stew of boiled potatoes simmered in milk, butter, pepper, salt, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potatoes Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut the cold boiled potatoes into pieces the size of a hickory nut.

  2. Place them in a pan with enough milk to create a dressing around them.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of butter, pepper, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  4. Warm the mixture through without boiling until the potatoes break up.

  5. Add a little flour to thicken the mixture to a thin custard consistency.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the stew and break up into a soft, thick texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid that forms the creamy dressing around the potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid to a custard-like consistency as it warms.

The step that matters

Warm without boiling. Boiling milk can scorch on the pan bottom and curdle or separate, and it can cause flour-thickened liquids to turn grainy. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and lets the potatoes break up slowly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, flour. 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.

More potato stew recipes

Pork and Sweet 4Irish 3 See all 26 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes