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Pommes De Terre, Sauce Blanche

Potatoes served in a creamy white sauce with parsley and chives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and chive work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 611 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pommes De Terre, Sauce Blanche

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with their skins on until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Peel and slice the potatoes into 1‑inch thick slices.

Make and combine

  1. Prepare a rich cream sauce separately.

  2. Gently stir the potato slices into the cream sauce.

  3. Set the mixture over boiling water and stew for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring to prevent scorching.

  4. Stir in the chopped parsley and chives before serving in a hot dish.

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. Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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
Provide the bulk of the dish and a soft, tender texture as they absorb the sauce.
Cream sauce
Adds richness and moisture, coating the potato slices.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma and a light herbal flavour.
Chives
Adds a mild onion-like aroma and fresh flavour.

The step that matters

Stewing over boiling water. Stirring prevents the cream sauce from catching and scorching on the base of the pan, and gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth rather than breaking or thickening unevenly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, chive, cream, sauce. 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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