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Stewed Potatoes

A dish of boiled potatoes simmered in milk, thickened with flour, and finished with butter, pepper, salt, and optional parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash, peel, and slice the potatoes.

  2. Place them in a saucepan and cover with milk.

  3. Boil until the potatoes are tender.

Thicken and season

  1. Thicken the mixture with a little flour mixed in cold milk.

  2. Add a good piece of butter, a little pepper, and salt to taste.

  3. Stir in finely chopped parsley if desired.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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 and soften into a tender base as they boil.
Milk
Cooks the potatoes and forms the liquid that becomes the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the mixture turns creamy rather than watery.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken with flour mixed in cold milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because starch grains swell unevenly on contact. Whisking it into cold milk first disperses the starch so it thickens smoothly once heated.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, flour, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

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