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Stewed Potatoes

A simple dish of sliced potatoes simmered with butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and slice them.

  2. Rinse the slices in hot water.

  3. Place the potatoes in a saucepan and cover with boiling water.

Cook and thicken

  1. Cook until nearly done.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour by mixing it with a little water to form a batter.

  4. Let it boil for 2-3 minutes 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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, softening as they cook in the water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the cooking liquid.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce when mixed with water and boiled.

The step that matters

Thicken with the flour batter. Flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before it goes into the hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. Boiling for a few minutes lets the starch swell and fully thicken the sauce, and removes the raw floury taste.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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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