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Creamed Potatoes

A dish of diced boiled potatoes simmered in milk, flour, butter, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the cold boiled potatoes into dice.

  2. Cover the diced potatoes with cold milk.

Cook

  1. Heat the mixture until hot.

  2. Add the flour moistened with a little cold milk.

  3. Cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the butter, chopped parsley, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body of the dish.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that becomes the creamy sauce around the potatoes.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the flour moistened with a little cold milk. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch granules swell unevenly. Mixing it into cold milk first disperses the starch so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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