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New Potatoes

New potatoes are cleaned, then served with butter, gravy, ketchup, or stewed in ale or water, sometimes baked with herrings or cooked with meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub new potatoes with a coarse cloth or flannel to clean them.

Make the sauces

  1. Prepare sauces with butter, salt, and pepper, or gravy, or melted butter and ketchup.

  2. Alternatively, stew potatoes in ale or water seasoned with pepper and salt.

Bake or stew

  1. Bake potatoes with herrings or sprats.

  2. Layer with seasoning and water.

  3. For a meat dish, layer sliced mutton or beef with potatoes and spices.

  4. Add a little water. Stew covered slowly.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

New potatoes
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when stewed or baked.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce served with the potatoes.
Mutton or beef
Adds savoury meat flavour when layered with potatoes and spices.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, ketchup, vinegar, mutton):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, ketchup, vinegar, mutton. 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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