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Hashed or Stewed Potatoes

Thinly sliced potatoes cooked in butter and milk until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Hashed or Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dredge the sliced potatoes with flour, salt, and pepper.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat and add the milk.

  2. Once hot, add the potatoes and stir gently.

  3. Cover and cook for about 8 minutes without stirring, ensuring the slices remain unbroken.

Alternative

  1. If milk is unavailable, fry the potatoes in a little butter.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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 baked potatoes
Form the body of the dish, with thin slices that hold their shape while cooking in the milk.
All-purpose flour
Dusted on the slices, it thickens the milk into a light sauce that coats the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the pan and helps keep the potatoes from sticking.
Milk
Forms the liquid that stews the potatoes and, thickened by the flour, becomes a creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Cover and cook without stirring. Stirring or moving the pan breaks the thin potato slices and releases starch unevenly, so a gentle, undisturbed simmer keeps the slices intact and the sauce smooth.

Swap the potato

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

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

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