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Dutch Potatoes

A boiled potato side dish with butter, lemon, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Dutch Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes, then soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the potatoes and place them in a saucepan with 1 quart of boiling water, 2 tablespoons of butter, and ½ tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  3. Cook until the potatoes are soft, then drain them.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the potatoes to the saucepan, add 3 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, ⅓ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, and a few grains of cayenne pepper.

  2. Cook for 3 minutes, shaking the pan frequently.

  3. Transfer to a hot serving dish and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon of finely chopped parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 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
Provide the starchy body of the dish, which softens fully when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that carries the flavour of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery flavour of the potatoes.

The step that matters

Cook for 3 minutes, shaking the pan frequently. Tossing the drained potatoes in butter over heat lets the coating cling and the surfaces dry slightly, so the butter glazes rather than pooling. Shaking keeps the potatoes moving so they do not scorch or break apart.

Swap the potato

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

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

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