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Stewed Potatoes, with Mustard Sauce

A stew of potatoes cooked in a mustard sauce with ham, herbs, and wine vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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, with Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, lightly fry the ham pieces in butter.

  2. Add the flour and stir for 5 minutes.

  3. Dilute with broth to create a light sauce, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Add the wine vinegar, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

  5. Let it boil slowly for 20 minutes, then skim and remove the herb bundle.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the mustard, then add the sliced potatoes.

  2. Heat thoroughly and 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wine + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,493 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Ham
Renders its fat into the butter and adds savoury, salty flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a light sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Carries the frying of the ham and adds richness to the sauce.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.
French mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that defines the sauce.
Potatoes
Absorb the sauce and provide the starchy body of the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and cook for 5 minutes. The flour must cook long enough to lose its raw, pasty taste and to thicken the broth smoothly. Adding broth too early or stopping the stir can leave lumps or a floury flavour in the sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, flour, sauce, pepper, wine, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, flour, sauce, pepper, wine, vinegar. 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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