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New Potatoes

Boiled new potatoes served with a butter, flour, and milk sauce.

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

New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the potatoes

  1. Scrub and wash the new potatoes without peeling them.

  2. Cover the potatoes with boiling water and cook rapidly in a closed kettle until tender.

  3. Drain the water.

  4. Sprinkle the potatoes with coarse sea salt.

  5. Set the potatoes aside to dry.

Make the butter sauce

  1. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour to the melted butter and stir the mixture until combined.

  3. Pour in 1 pint of milk.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. Add the potatoes to the sauce and heat the potatoes and sauce together.

  6. Serve the potatoes hot.

Alternative method

  1. Alternatively, simmer the potatoes in melted butter, turning occasionally until done.

  2. Transfer the potatoes to a dish.

  3. Pour melted butter over the potatoes.

  4. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

New potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, which turns tender when boiled or simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the potatoes and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it comes to a boil.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Flour must be heated in the butter and milk to thicken the sauce fully. Stir while it heats so lumps do not form and the sauce turns smooth.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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