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Potato Fricassee

A skillet dish of diced potatoes cooked with butter, milk, eggs, and seasonings, finished with 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 ↓

Potato Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fricassee

  1. In a skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the milk and heat until hot.

  3. Stir in the diced cold potatoes, seasoning with pepper, salt, and onion juice.

  4. Heat thoroughly, then gradually add the beaten eggs, stirring constantly until thickened. Be careful not to overcook, or the sauce will curdle.

Serve

  1. Pour into a serving dish and sprinkle with minced parsley before serving.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the milk mixture into a creamy sauce as they set when gently heated.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the eggs thicken.
Potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the dish, absorbing the creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the base of the skillet mixture.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs thicken when heated, but if the mixture gets too hot or is overcooked, the proteins tighten and separate, causing the sauce to curdle. Add the beaten eggs gradually and stir constantly over gentle heat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, potato, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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