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Potato Puree

A smooth potato purée made with butter, stock, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the potatoes.

Stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine potatoes, butter, peppercorns, salt, nutmeg, and white stock.

  2. Cover and stew for 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Gradually stir in the cream over heat.

  2. Pulp the mixture through a sieve or tammy.

  3. Warm before serving with fresh butter.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the puree, giving body and a smooth, starchy texture once pulped.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the potatoes.
White stock
Cooks the potatoes through and supplies liquid that carries flavour into the puree.
Cream
Adds fat and smoothness, loosening the puree and mellowing its texture.

The step that matters

Pulp the mixture through a sieve or tammy. Pushing the cooked potatoes through a sieve breaks down their starch cells evenly, producing a smooth puree; leaving lumps or over-working the starch can make it gluey.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, cream. 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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