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Browned Potato Puree

A creamy potato purée made with browned potatoes, onions, butter, flour, parsley, custard, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Browned Potato Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Heat the dripping in a soup kettle.

  2. Fry the potatoes and sliced onion in the hot fat until browned, being careful not to scorch them.

  3. Add the boiling water, cover, and simmer until the potatoes are soft and broken.

  4. Rub the mixture through a colander back into the kettle.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the butter, brown flour, chopped parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. In another saucepan, make a custard by mixing the boiling milk with the beaten eggs. Remove from heat and beat for one minute.

  3. Combine the custard with the potato mixture and serve.

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

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

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the puree, breaking down into a smooth, thick body.
Eggs
Set the custard and add richness and structure to the finished puree.
Dripping
Carries the frying heat and adds savory flavor and browning to the potatoes and onion.
Brown flour
Thickens the puree as it cooks with the butter, giving body to the finished dish.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, and enriches the custard.

The step that matters

Frying the potatoes and onion. Browning builds flavor through the Maillard reaction, but scorched fat turns bitter. Keep the heat moderate and stir so the potatoes brown evenly without burning.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, milk, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, parsley, pepper, milk, egg. 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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