Skip to main content
Main

Potato Poekidge

A simple potato porridge made with onions, bacon, pepper, and water, simmered until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Poekidge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Place onions, bacon, pepper, and water in a pot.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes.

Cook the potatoes

  1. Add potatoes and reduce heat to a gentle boil for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve

  1. Serve with bread.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch releases into the cooking liquid, thickening the porridge and giving it body.
Onions
They soften as they simmer, adding sweetness and a mellow aroma to the broth.
Bacon
It renders fat into the water and adds savory, smoky flavor throughout the dish.

The step that matters

Simmering the potatoes gently while stirring. Potato starch thickens the liquid as it cooks and can stick and scorch on the bottom of the pot. A gentle boil with occasional stirring keeps the porridge smooth and prevents a burnt taste.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, potato. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes