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Stewed Potatoes

Stewed potatoes are boiled potatoes simmered in milk and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Cover the diced potatoes in salted boiling water.

  2. Cook until nearly soft, then drain the potatoes.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the same quantity of milk to the potatoes.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Season to taste.

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

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, starchy base.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, forming the liquid that the dish is built around.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells and gelatinizes when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour. Flour must be stirred evenly into the hot milk so its starch hydrates and swells without lumps. The mixture needs to reach a boil for the starch to fully thicken the sauce.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Parsnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

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