Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
To Boil New Potatoes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the potatoes thoroughly and rub off the skins with a coarse cloth.
Cook
Place the potatoes in boiling salted water and cook until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.
Test with a fork; when done, drain the water.
Let the potatoes sit by the fire with the saucepan lid partly removed until dry.
Serve
Transfer the potatoes to a hot serving dish and add a piece of butter the size of a walnut.
Serve hot, plain, or with melted butter.
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.
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- New potatoes
- Form the entire dish, so their starchy flesh becomes soft and fluffy when cooked.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a silky coating that melts over the hot potatoes.
The step that matters
Letting the potatoes dry after draining. Residual water left on the surface dilutes the butter and makes the potatoes soggy. Keeping the lid partly off lets steam escape so the surface dries and holds the butter.
“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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