Name: Potatoes “a LA Creme.”
Ingredients: 4 medium potatoes; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; 2 tablespoons flour; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; 1 small shallot, minced; 1 cup cream

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 34,118 recipes mention both. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potatoes “a LA Creme.”

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Boil the potatoes until tender, then peel and slice them.

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add salt, pepper, flour, nutmeg, parsley, and shallot; stir to combine.
Pour in the cream and stir until the sauce boils.

Finish and serve

Add the sliced potatoes to the sauce and simmer for 2 minutes.
Serve immediately.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together3,718 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Potato + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,855 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together5,062 recipes

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

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,494 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the sauce as they simmer.
Butter: Adds richness and carries the flavour of the aromatics into the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce that coats the potatoes.
Cream: Makes the sauce rich and silky, and thickens it further when it boils.
Shallot: Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until it boils. Flour only thickens fully once the starch granules swell in boiling liquid. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and pasty tasting, and the cream can scorch if left unstirred on the heat.

Flavor stand-ins for the shallot

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

Carrotbetter flavor fit
Capsicumbetter flavor fit
Spinachbetter flavor fit
Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, flour, nutmeg, parsley, cream. 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).

“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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Potatoes “a LA Creme.”