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Whole Stewed Potatoes

Whole potatoes stewed in milk and butter sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Whole Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes and place them in a pot with cold water.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook until tender.

  3. Turn off the heat and drain the water.

  4. Cover the potatoes with warm milk and stew for 10 minutes.

  5. Transfer the potatoes to a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In the remaining milk, thicken with butter rolled in flour.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and minced parsley.

  3. Pour the sauce over the potatoes, pressing each potato with a spoon to crack it.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a soft, tender texture.
Warm milk
Gently stews the potatoes and forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk sauce. Flour must be rolled in butter and whisked into the milk so it disperses without lumps. Starch needs to be heated in liquid to swell and thicken the sauce; adding it dry or unmixed causes clumps.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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