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To Boil New Potatoes

Boiled new potatoes seasoned with coarse sea salt and optional fresh butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

To Boil New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrub the potatoes with a brush or coarse cloth to remove the skins.

  2. Wash them clean and place them in boiling water without salt.

Boil and season

  1. Boil gently until tender, about 10-20 minutes depending on size.

  2. Drain the water completely and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Shake the saucepan and let the potatoes sit by the fire for 1 minute.

  4. Serve immediately, optionally tossing with a small slice of fresh butter.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

New potatoes
Starchy flesh cooks to a soft, fluffy texture that holds its shape when boiled.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth coating of fat, which carries flavour and softens the potato surface.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. A rolling boil knocks the potatoes against each other and breaks their skins and edges. Gentle simmering cooks the interior evenly while keeping the surface intact.

“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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