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Berlin Potato

A potato dish cooked with butter, flour, broth, parsley, egg yolk, and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Berlin Potato

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until well mixed.

  2. Add the meat broth and diced cold boiled potatoes.

  3. Cook for a few minutes, then add pepper, salt, chopped parsley, and the egg yolk.

  4. Cook for 3 more minutes and serve with slices of lemon.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, light sauce when cooked with the butter.
Meat broth
Forms the liquid base that the potatoes simmer in.
Cold boiled potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the dish as they soften in the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a silkier texture.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated but can curdle or scramble if the mixture boils hard. Keep the heat gentle once it goes in, so the sauce turns smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, meat, pepper, parsley, egg, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat, pepper, parsley, egg, lemon. 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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