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Potato Fricassee

A sautéed potato dish with butter, onion, and salt, simmered until the water evaporates and potatoes become soft.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Fricassee

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the potatoes into dice and soak in cold water for 10-15 minutes.

  2. Heat the butter in a frying pan.

Cook

  1. Brown the chopped onion in the butter.

  2. Add the potatoes and enough water to almost cover them.

  3. Season with salt.

  4. Cook until the water has boiled away and the potatoes are soft and mealy.

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

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dish, softening and turning mealy as the water cooks off.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the onion brown in the pan.
Onion
Browning in butter adds sweetness and savoury depth to the dish.

The step that matters

Cook until the water has boiled away. Cooking until the water evaporates lets the potato starch soften and turn mealy rather than waterlogged. Stopping early leaves the potatoes wet and stodgy.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter. 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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