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Stewed Cream Potatoes

A stewed potato dish with milk or cream, baking soda, butter, flour, lemon peel, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Stewed Cream Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and dice the potatoes.

  2. Soak in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Cook in boiling salted water until tender, then drain carefully.

Make the sauce

  1. Add milk (or cream) and baking soda to the potatoes.

  2. Heat the mixture.

  3. Stir in butter mixed with flour and lemon peel.

  4. Stew for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. 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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 dish, becoming soft and starchy once cooked until tender.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the creamy liquid the potatoes are stewed in.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cooking liquid, which helps soften the potatoes further.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour gives a smooth, thickened finish.
Flour
Thickens the liquid when mixed with butter and stirred in, giving the sauce body.

The step that matters

Add the butter and flour mixture. Stirring butter and flour into hot liquid and stewing briefly lets the flour thicken smoothly; adding it lumpy or without enough stirring can leave clumps.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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