Name: Chopped Potatoes
Ingredients: 2 cups cold boiled potatoes, coarsely chopped; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chopped Potatoes

Ingredients

2 cups cold boiled potatoes, coarsely chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Directions

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Add the grated lemon peel, pepper, and salt.
Stir in the chopped potatoes until heated through, but do not let them brown.
Drain and serve in a deep 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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes: Provide the bulk of the dish, absorbing butter and warming through without browning.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying the flavour of the lemon peel and pepper across the potatoes.
Lemon peel: Adds bright aroma and a fresh citrus note that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the chopped potatoes until heated through, but do not let them brown.. Cold potatoes need only enough heat to warm through. Overheating or leaving them too long in the pan drives off moisture and can scorch the surface, so the dish turns dry or bitter instead of tender and golden.

Swap the potato

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

Capsicumfits better
Spinachfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, 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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Chopped Potatoes