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New Potatoes — Stewed

Stewed potatoes simmered in milk with butter, flour, pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

New Potatoes — Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Rub or scrape off the skins of the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes in hot salted water until done.

  3. Turn off the water and dry the potatoes on the range.

  4. Crack each potato with the back of a spoon.

Stew and serve

  1. Drop the cracked potatoes into a saucepan with hot milk, pepper, coarse sea salt, chopped parsley, and butter cut up in flour.

  2. Simmer for five minutes.

  3. Pour into a vegetable 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

New potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, softening into a tender, starchy body when boiled and stewed.
Hot milk
Provides liquid and creaminess, turning the potatoes into a moist, rich stew.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and smoothing the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the stew a body that clings to the potatoes.

The step that matters

Simmer for five minutes. Flour mixed with butter only thickens properly when the hot milk is kept at a gentle simmer and stirred, so the starch swells and sets smoothly instead of staying lumpy or pasty.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, pepper, 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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