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Creamed Potatoes

A creamy potato side dish made with pepper, milk, flour, and boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Add 2 tablespoons of pepper to taste and stir until it hisses.

  2. Add ½ cup of milk (with a pinch of baking soda) and heat until hot.

  3. Stir in 1 teaspoon of flour and continue stirring until it boils.

Finish and serve

  1. Chop the cold boiled potatoes and add them to the mixture.

  2. Serve as soon as it begins to boil.

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. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Milk
Provides the liquid that forms the creamy base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and soak up the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and keep stirring until it boils. Constant stirring spreads the flour evenly so it does not clump. The starch needs to heat to near boiling to swell and thicken the milk, and cooking it fully removes the raw flour taste.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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