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Creamed Potatoes

Creamed potatoes are sliced boiled potatoes topped with a butter‑milk sauce thickened with cornstarch and folded with beaten egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Slice the potatoes while hot.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the butter.

  3. Dissolve the corn starch in cold water.

  4. Add the dissolved mixture to the milk.

  5. Add the chopped parsley.

  6. Boil until thickened.

  7. Beat the egg white until frothy.

  8. Fold the beaten egg white into the sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the sliced potatoes in a deep dish.

  2. Sprinkle with pepper and salt.

  3. Pour the sauce over the potatoes.

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

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

  3. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, absorbing the sauce as the base for serving.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the sauce its body.
Egg white
Beaten to a froth and folded in, it lightens the sauce's texture.

The step that matters

Boil until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens once the mixture reaches a boil, and it needs to be stirred while it heats so it does not clump or stay thin.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, butter, corn, egg, 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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