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Cream Potatoes

A creamy potato dish made with flour, butter, milk, eggs, and salted potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cream the flour with the butter in a bowl.

  2. Heat the milk in a saucepan until warm.

Make the creamed potatoes

  1. Stir the beaten eggs, flour, and butter mixture into the warm milk.

  2. Add the chopped salted potatoes and bring to a boil.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Starch thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that coats the potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel, and carries flavour into the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and gives it a creamy body.
Eggs
Enrich the sauce and help it set and thicken as it heats.
Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dish and absorb the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs, flour and butter into the warm milk. Flour starch thickens only when it is evenly dispersed, so lumps form if it clumps before mixing. Egg proteins also set with heat and can curdle if the mixture overheats, so the blend should be stirred smoothly and kept at a gentle heat.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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