Name: Stewed Potatoes, with Bacon
Ingredients: ¼ pound bacon, sliced into 1-inch pieces; 2 tablespoons flour; ½ pint broth; 12 potatoes, sliced; 1 bunch parsley, tied with a sprig of thyme and 1 bay leaf; Salt and pepper to taste

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

¼ pound bacon, sliced into 1-inch pieces
2 tablespoons flour
½ pint broth
12 potatoes, sliced
1 bunch parsley, tied with a sprig of thyme and 1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, lightly fry the bacon slices.
Add the flour and cook until light brown, stirring with a wooden spoon.
Dilute with the broth and bring to a boil.

Stew and serve

Add the sliced potatoes and the herb bundle.
Season with salt and pepper, then let simmer for 20 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.
Remove the herb 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.

Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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 and flavour into the pan that the rest of the dish builds on.
Flour: Browned in the bacon fat, it thickens the broth into a sauce.
Broth: Forms the cooking liquid that the potatoes simmer in.
Potatoes: Soften as they simmer, becoming tender and absorbing the savoury sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Cooking the flour in bacon fat until light brown removes its raw taste and builds nutty flavour. Stirring keeps it from scorching, and it must be fully mixed before the broth goes in so the sauce does not turn lumpy.

Swap the potato

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

Shallotfits better
Parsnipfits better
Carrotfits better
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.

Potato Croquettes255 recipes

Potato Rolls78 recipes

Potato Chips53 recipes

Sweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes

Like knowing why a recipe works?

The free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.

Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.

Stewed Potatoes, with Bacon