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Creamed Potatoes

A side dish of boiled potatoes mixed with cream sauce and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and cut the potatoes into large dice.

  2. Boil the potatoes until almost done, then drain.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cream sauce and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve with a sprinkle of chopped parsley for added flavor.

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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk of the dish and a soft, tender texture when cooked.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness, coating the potatoes and giving the dish its creamy texture.

The step that matters

Simmer the cream sauce gently. Once the potatoes are added to the cream sauce, a gentle simmer lets the sauce thicken and cling to the potatoes without scorching. Boiling hard can break the cream sauce and cause it to stick to the bottom of the pan, so keep the heat low and stir occasionally.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cream, sauce. 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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