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Creamed Potatoes

A creamy side dish of boiled potatoes mixed with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, and optional cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir until combined.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly, and cook until the sauce thickens.

  4. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and parsley.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the cream sauce over the cooked potatoes.

  2. If desired, add grated cheese to the potatoes before serving.

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, absorbing the sauce while staying soft and tender after boiling.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with melted butter and then milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as the starch in the flour swells on heating.
Cheese
Adds savoury richness and flavour when grated over the potatoes.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until it thickens. Flour must be cooked in the butter and milk long enough for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce. Stirring constantly prevents lumps from forming as the milk is added.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, milk, pepper, cheese):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, milk, pepper, cheese. 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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