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To Cook Small New Potatoes

A boiled potato dish finished with milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Cook Small New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Soak the small new potatoes in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Rub off the skin with a coarse cloth.

  3. Boil the potatoes until tender, then drain well.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Add enough milk to nearly cover the potatoes and heat it to boiling.

  2. In a separate bowl, cream together the butter and flour, then stir into the hot milk.

  3. Stir well to prevent the potatoes from sticking, being careful not to break them.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, and add more butter if desired.

  5. Serve hot in a deep dish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Small new potatoes
Provide the starchy base that softens into tender pieces in the milky sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that coats the potatoes and makes the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy sauce when cooked with the butter and hot liquid.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and butter into the hot milk. Flour mixed with butter and added to boiling milk can clump if not stirred well. Stirring disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than lumpy.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, 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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