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Boiled Potatoes

Boiled potatoes served with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Boiled Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash the potatoes.

  2. Peel the potatoes.

  3. Cut the potatoes into half-inch slices.

  4. Rinse the sliced potatoes in cold water.

Boil and dry

  1. Cover the potatoes with boiling water and cook gently until a fork pierces them easily.

  2. Pour off the water, uncover for a moment, then shake the pot up and down once with the lid on.

  3. Partly remove the cover and set the pot on the stove for a few minutes to dry the potatoes.

  4. Transfer the potatoes to a hot serving dish and sprinkle with salt.

Make the milk sauce

  1. In a separate pan, cream the butter.

  2. Add the flour and salt to the butter, beating well.

  3. Stir in the boiling milk and boil gently for about ten minutes.

  4. Add the minced parsley and a dust of pepper.

  5. 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.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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, cooking into a soft, tender body that a fork pierces easily.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce so it coats the potatoes instead of running off.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and body as it simmers.

The step that matters

Drying the potatoes after boiling. Pouring off the water and briefly drying the pot on the stove lets surface moisture evaporate, so the potatoes stay firm and do not turn watery or waterlogged when served.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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