Name: Potatoes
Ingredients: Potatoes; Coarse sea salt; Butter or oil; Salt; Pepper; Nutmeg; Chopped parsley; Egg yolks

Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the potatoes thoroughly and cut off a small piece of the peel.
Place the potatoes in a saucepan with cold water.
When the water begins to boil, add ½ cup of cold water.
Repeat adding cold water each time it boils until the potatoes are fully cooked.
Drain the water and sprinkle a handful of coarse sea salt over the potatoes.
Cover with a clean, soft cloth and let them dry by the fire.
For a German variation, peel and slice the potatoes, boil them until soft, then mash with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and chopped parsley.
Mix in beaten egg yolks, form into balls, and fry in butter or oil until golden brown.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,052 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg):

Shallotfits better
Spinachfits about as well
Carrotfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.