Skip to main content
Main

Aunt Laura's Breakfast Potatoes

A dish of boiled potatoes simmered with butter, salt, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Aunt Laura's Breakfast Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select non-mealy boiled potatoes and cut them into dime-sized pieces.

Cook

  1. Layer the potato pieces in a stewpan with salt and butter.

  2. Pour cream over the top, cover, and heat slowly.

  3. Let them stew gently for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring minimally with a fork.

  4. Be careful not to break the potato pieces when serving.

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. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Firm, non-mealy potatoes hold their shape when stewed in the cream.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the potatoes.
Cream
Provides moisture and richness, forming the sauce the potatoes stew in.

The step that matters

Stirring minimally while stewing. Potato pieces are fragile once cooked. Stirring with a fork gently, rather than vigorously, keeps them from breaking up and turning the dish mushy, and cream left to heat slowly is less likely to scorch or separate.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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.

You might also like

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