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Dessert

Creamed Potatoes

A side dish of boiled potatoes simmered in butter, flour, and cream or milk, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan until it bubbles.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Gradually add the cream or milk, stirring continuously.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

Finish the potatoes

  1. Add the diced cold boiled potatoes and cook until thoroughly hot.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, and helps form the base roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the cream with the melted butter, giving the sauce body.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, adding moisture and a smooth, creamy texture.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the dish, absorbing the sauce and becoming tender as they heat through.

The step that matters

Adding the cream or milk. Adding liquid too quickly or without constant stirring lets the flour clump into lumps instead of dispersing evenly. Stirring continuously keeps the starch suspended so the sauce thickens smoothly as it heats.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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