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Stewed Potatoes, Maitre D' Hotel

Stewed potatoes simmered in white broth with butter, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes, Maitre D' Hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the potatoes as in the previous recipe.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with the white broth and heat over high heat.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Finish and serve

  1. When the broth is nearly reduced, add the butter, parsley, and lemon juice.

  2. Toss well until the butter is melted, 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

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 main body of the dish and absorb the broth and butter as they cook.
White broth
Cooks the potatoes and reduces to a flavourful liquid that coats them.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy coating as it melts into the reduced broth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery broth.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth. The broth must be nearly reduced before the butter goes in. If too much liquid remains, the butter will not emulsify into a glaze and the potatoes will be watery rather than coated.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, lemon, 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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