Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Potatoes

A simple potato stew with lard, garlic, onion, tomato, green pepper, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Garlic and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the lard in a frying pan.

  2. Add the potatoes and fry until golden.

Stew

  1. Stir in the garlic, onion, tomato, green pepper, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cover the mixture with warm water.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes until the potatoes are tender.

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. Garlic + oniontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Garlic + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,076 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,517 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and starchy as they simmer.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the potatoes and carries flavor.
Tomato
Adds moisture and acidity that shape the stewing liquid.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness as it softens into the stew.
Garlic
Contributes pungent aroma that deepens as it cooks.

The step that matters

Frying the potatoes until golden. Browning the potato surfaces in hot fat builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Potatoes that are crowded or too pale will steam, leaving a bland, soft stew instead of one with savory color and taste.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, garlic, onion, tomato, pepper. 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.

More stewed potatoes recipes

with Bacon 3with Mustard Sauce 3 See all 70 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes