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Stewed Potatoes

Potatoes stewed with onion, fat, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Brown the chopped onion in the fat.

  2. Add the flour and stir well.

  3. Add the quartered potatoes and cover with water.

  4. Season with salt and cook until the potatoes are tender.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat
Carries the browning of the onion and adds richness to the stew.
Onion
Browns in the fat to add savory depth and sweetness to the stew.
Flour
Stirred into the fat and onion to thicken the cooking liquid as it stews.
Potatoes
Soften as they cook, becoming tender and absorbing the seasoned liquid.

The step that matters

Add the flour and stir well. If flour is not stirred thoroughly into the fat and onion, it can form lumps that stay visible in the finished sauce. Stirring coats each particle so it disperses evenly when water is added.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, potato. 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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