Name: Potatoes with Stock
Ingredients: 1 quart cold boiled potatoes, diced; 1 pint stock; 2 tablespoons butter; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 1 small onion, minced; 1 tablespoon minced parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Potatoes with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Season the diced potatoes with salt and pepper.
Add the stock and cook for 10 minutes.
Stir in the lemon juice, parsley, and onion, and cook for an additional 3 minutes.
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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold boiled potatoes: Form the body of the dish, absorbing the stock and becoming tender as they cook.
Stock: Provides the cooking liquid and savory flavor that the potatoes absorb.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the finished dish.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.

Swap the onion

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

Carrotfits better
Chivefits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, lemon, pepper, parsley. 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.