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To Cook Small New Potatoes

Boiled small new potatoes tossed in a butter, flour, and milk sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. In a bowl, cream the butter and flour together.

  3. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the hot milk to thicken.

  4. Add the potatoes to the milk mixture, stirring gently to avoid breaking them.

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

Serve

  1. 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
Form the body of the dish, becoming soft and tender when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, mellow flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the potatoes.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the hot milk. Flour thickens best when it is fully blended with fat and dispersed into hot liquid; adding it cold or clumped can leave lumps and an uneven sauce.

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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