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New Potatoes

Boiled new potatoes served with butter, milk, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

New Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and scrape the new potatoes, placing them in cold water as you go.

Boil and finish

  1. Put the potatoes in salted boiling water and boil until easily pierced with a fork.

  2. Drain the water and add butter, salt, white pepper, and enough milk to cover the potatoes.

  3. Boil gently for five minutes, then 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Potato + white peppertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

New potatoes
Provide the starchy base of the dish, cooking to a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the potatoes a smooth, glossy coating.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess as it reduces around the potatoes.

The step that matters

Boil until easily pierced with a fork. Potatoes that are undercooked stay firm in the centre, while overcooked ones break apart. Testing with a fork shows when the starch has softened through without the flesh collapsing.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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