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Potato Stew

A stew of diced potatoes cooked with fat salt pork, onion, parsley, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Potato Stew

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and dice the potatoes.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the potatoes in hot water with the fat salt pork, minced onion, and chopped parsley until the pork dissolves and the potatoes are very tender.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt if necessary.

  3. Serve in a hot, deep dish, ensuring the stew is not too liquid or too stiff.

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. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  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
Provide the bulk of the stew and thicken it as their starch breaks down during cooking.
Fat salt pork
Melts into the stew, adding fat and savory richness to the broth.

The step that matters

Judging the consistency when serving. Potato starch thickens the liquid as the potatoes cook and break down, so the stew can turn stiff quickly if it is left to reduce. Checking it as you serve lets you adjust it to be neither too liquid nor too stiff.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pork, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pork, parsley, 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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