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Beauvilling Potatoes

A buttery, parsley‑flavored potato dish seasoned with sea salt, pepper, and lemon or verjuice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beauvilling Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash the potatoes thoroughly.

  2. Boil the potatoes until tender, then drain in a colander.

  3. Peel the potatoes and cut them into small round pieces or thin slices.

Cook and serve

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, salt, and whole pepper to the butter.

  3. Add the potatoes to the stewpan and stir as the butter melts.

  4. If needed, add a little bouillon or water to moisten.

  5. Before serving, add the juice of a lemon or a dash of verjuice.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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
Form the body of the dish, absorbing the butter and soaking up moisture as they warm.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the potatoes and carrying the flavour of the herbs and pepper.
Lemon juice or verjuice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery potatoes just before serving.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid. Potatoes absorb liquid unevenly and can turn gluey or break apart if stirred hard or drenched, so add bouillon or water only in small amounts and stir gently.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, pepper, lemon. 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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