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New Potatoes

Boiled new potatoes tossed with butter, flour, milk, and seasonings, optionally pan‑fried in drippings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Wash and scrape the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes for 10 minutes. Turn off the water.

  3. Add enough boiling hot water to cover the potatoes and a little salt. Cook for a few moments.

  4. Drain the potatoes.

Make the milk sauce

  1. Return the potatoes to the stove. Add butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour with 1 pint of milk to make a thickening. Cover the potatoes. Pour the boiling milk mixture over the potatoes.

  3. Serve.

Alternative: fry in drippings

  1. Alternatively, after draining, place the potatoes in a skillet with hot drippings. Cover the skillet. Shake until browned.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

New potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, cooked tender by boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the potatoes.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, coating sauce.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce once thickened with flour.
Hot drippings
Fat for the fried version, helping the potatoes brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Mixing flour into the milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps. Whisking it smoothly into cold or room-temperature milk first lets starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens without lumps when heated.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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