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Stewed Potatoes

A creamy stew of sliced potatoes simmered in butter, flour, nutmeg, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with a little salt until tender.

  2. Peel and slice the potatoes.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Add the cream and mix well until the sauce boils.

  3. Add the sliced potatoes to the sauce and let them stew for 15 minutes.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 and absorb the sauce as they stew.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Makes the sauce rich and silky and coats the potatoes.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until it boils. Flour must be cooked with the melted butter and then heated in liquid until the sauce boils, so starch swells and thickens. Stirring while it heats prevents lumps and scorching on the pan base.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, nutmeg, cream. 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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