Name: Boiled Potatoes
Ingredients: Potatoes; Coarse sea salt; White sauce; Capers or gherkins

Why it works: Potato and capers work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 224 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Potatoes

Ingredients

Potatoes
Coarse sea salt
White sauce
Capers or gherkins

Directions

Cook and peel

Cook the potatoes in their skins in salted water until tender.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into slices.

Serve

Place the slices on a dish.
Pour white sauce over the potatoes and sprinkle with capers or gherkins cut into small pieces.

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.

Potato + caperstop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together224 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together678 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,073 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Starchy base that becomes soft and tender when boiled, forming the body of the dish.
White sauce: Adds moisture and creamy richness over the warm potato slices.
Capers or gherkins: Add acidity and a sharp, briny contrast to the mild potatoes.