Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Potato Balls
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Boil or steam small new Irish potatoes until tender.
Place three potatoes in a piece of cheesecloth.
Gather the edges and twist until the potatoes blend into a dry, mealy ball.
Serve
Drop the potato ball into a hot dish and season with melted butter.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- New irish potatoes
- Starch that cooks soft and, when mashed dry, forms the body of the ball.
- Melted butter
- Adds fat and richness, coating the mealy potato for flavour and a smooth mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Twisting the cheesecloth. Twisting while the potatoes are still hot presses out moisture and breaks up starch cells, giving a dry, mealy ball rather than a wet, gluey one. Potatoes that cool first are harder to bind.
“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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