Name: Potato Surprise
Ingredients: 6 raw potatoes; minced meat (cooked or raw); 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon tomato sauce

Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Potato Surprise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Wash and peel the potatoes.
Scoop out a good amount of the inside of each potato.

Stuff and cook

Fill the potatoes with minced meat, parsley, salt, pepper, butter, and tomato sauce.
Place the filled potatoes in a greased bag.
Cook for 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the size of the potatoes.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 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

Raw potatoes: Form the edible shell that holds the filling and cooks until soft.
Minced meat: Supplies the savory filling that gives the potatoes their main flavor and body.
Butter: Adds fat that enriches the filling and carries flavor.
Tomato sauce: Adds moisture and acidity that season the meat filling.

Swap the tomato

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

Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Tomatothe original

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