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New Potatoes

Boiled new potatoes seasoned with mint, butter, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and brush the potatoes, then soak them in cold water.

  2. Scrape or rub off the skins, placing them back in cold water to prevent browning.

Boil and steam

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water with a sprig of mint for 15-20 minutes until soft.

  2. Drain the water, cover the potatoes with a cloth, and let them steam for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the mint, add butter on top, and let it melt.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot serving dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  2. Mint + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,198 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Potato + minttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

New potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, becoming soft and fluffy when boiled and steamed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting over the hot potatoes to give moisture and flavour.
Mint
Infuses the boiling water with aroma that subtly flavours the potatoes.

The step that matters

Scrape or rub off the skins, keeping potatoes in cold water. Cut or scraped potato flesh oxidises and darkens quickly when exposed to air. Returning the potatoes to cold water slows browning and keeps them pale and clean-looking until cooking.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, parsley. 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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