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To Cook New Potatoes

Boiled new potatoes served with a cream and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Cook New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Wash the potatoes and scrub the peel with a brush.

  2. Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender.

  3. Remove the potatoes and keep them warm in a crock on the back of the stove.

Cream and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat cream and butter until hot.

  2. Add the potatoes to the saucepan and shake to coat well.

  3. Transfer to a covered dish and serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

New potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, with a tender, starchy interior when boiled.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky coating that clings to the potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a glossy finish that helps the sauce coat the potatoes.

The step that matters

Coating the potatoes while hot. Warm potatoes absorb fat and cream more readily, so the sauce clings evenly. Shaking the pan gently spreads the cream and butter over every piece, so the coating stays even rather than pooling at the bottom.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter. 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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