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Creamed Potato, with Parsley

A creamy potato dish made with boiled potatoes, milk, butter, and 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 ↓

Creamed Potato, with Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stew pan, combine the chopped potatoes, flour, salt, and pepper.

  2. Mix well, then add the milk.

  3. Place the stew pan in another pan with boiling water and cook until the mixture is boiling hot, about 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in the butter and parsley.

  5. Remove the stew pan from the water and let the potatoes boil briefly.

  6. Adjust seasoning with more salt and pepper if needed, then serve.

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 bulk of the dish and absorb the milk sauce as they heat.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy sauce that coats the potatoes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk over indirect heat. Flour thickens milk only when the mixture is heated gently and stirred so lumps do not form. Boiling too hard or unevenly can scorch the milk or leave the sauce grainy and thin.

Swap the parsley

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

  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, flour, pepper, milk, butter. 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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