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New Potatoes

Boiled potatoes seasoned with mint and served with a small piece of butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the potatoes in a bowl of cold water for a few minutes.

  2. Rub or scrape off the skin.

Boil

  1. Place the potatoes in a saucepan with cold water, salt, and a sprig of mint.

  2. Boil gently for twenty minutes.

  3. Drain and dry the potatoes.

Serve

  1. Serve with a tiny piece of butter on each potato.

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

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

  2. Potato + minttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Mint + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a soft, tender interior.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it melts over the hot potato.
Mint
Contributes a fresh, aromatic flavour that lifts the mild potato.

The step that matters

Boil gently for twenty minutes. A gentle simmer cooks the potatoes through evenly while keeping their skins intact. A hard, rapid boil can break the surface and leave the outside mushy before the centre is tender.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter. 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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