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Stewed Potatoes, with Bacon

A simple stew of sliced potatoes simmered with bacon, flour, broth, herbs, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes, with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. Fry the bacon lightly in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook until light brown, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  3. Dilute with the broth and bring to a boil.

Cook the potatoes

  1. Add the sliced potatoes, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Let simmer for 20 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.

  4. Remove the parsley bundle 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat for frying and adds savoury, smoky flavour to the dish.
Flour
Browned in the bacon fat, it thickens the broth into a sauce.
Broth
Forms the cooking liquid that the potatoes simmer in and soften within.
Potatoes
Absorb the seasoned broth as they cook, becoming tender and starchy.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until light brown. Flour must be stirred over heat long enough to lose its raw taste and thicken well, but not so long that it darkens too far and loses thickening power.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, parsley, thyme, 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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