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Breakfast Potatoes

Potatoes sliced thin, boiled, then cooked with butter, cream or milk, and salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Breakfast Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and cut the potatoes into very thin slices.

Cook

  1. Cook the slices in a small amount of salted water until tender.

  2. Let the water evaporate.

  3. Add salt and a lump of butter, along with cream or milk.

  4. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, and serve.

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

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

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook through.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour across the potato slices.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess as the potatoes finish cooking.

The step that matters

Let the water evaporate. Once the water is gone, the potatoes can fry gently in the butter and cream rather than stay soggy. Stopping too early leaves them wet; waiting too long can scorch the dairy on the pan.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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