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Fancy Creamed Potatoes with Cheese

A creamy potato dish flavored with butter, cream, cheese, and thickened with cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Fancy Creamed Potatoes with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dice the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Place the diced potatoes in a stew pan and cover with cream.

Make the sauce

  1. Add a generous amount of butter and enough cornstarch to thicken.

  2. Cook until the cornstarch is thoroughly cooked, then add grated cheese.

Fry and finish

  1. In a frying pan, melt plenty of butter and fry the potatoes for 8 minutes.

  2. Do not cook the potatoes too long to preserve their flavor.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together959 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Cream + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body of the dish.
Cream
Supplies moisture and richness for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, both in the sauce and when frying.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream as it heats, turning it into a sauce.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and melts into the sauce for richness.

The step that matters

Cook the cornstarch thoroughly. Cornstarch only thickens fully once it is heated enough to swell and set. Undercooked starch leaves a thin sauce with a raw, floury taste, so the mixture should be cooked until it is fully thickened before the cheese goes in.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, cheese. 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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