Name: Potatoes a LA Creme
Ingredients: cold boiled potatoes; thick sweet cream; cornstarch; butter; coarse sea salt; white pepper

Why it works: Cream and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 41,494 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potatoes a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Cut cold boiled potatoes into small dice.
Simmer the potatoes in thick sweet cream for a few minutes.
Slightly thicken the cream with cornstarch.
Season with butter, coarse sea salt, and white pepper.
Serve.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Cream + buttertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,494 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Potato + buttertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,445 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together2,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Potato + white peppertop 9% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together157 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Cream + white peppertop 12% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together1,439 recipes

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

Flavor stand-ins for the white pepper

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

Nutmegbetter flavor fit
Garlicbetter flavor fit
Parsleybetter flavor fit
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cream, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).