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Mock New Potatoes

A baked potato dish with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce seasoned with mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Mock New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until nearly done.

  2. Cut the potatoes into pieces the size and shape of a pigeon’s egg.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Add the milk gradually, stirring until smooth, and season with mace.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the potato pieces to the sauce and simmer until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Serve garnished with chopped parsley.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Waxy potatoes
Hold their shape when cooked, giving the gratin pieces a firm, intact texture.
Butter
Provides fat for the roux and adds richness and flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter as a roux.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens and coats the potatoes.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps thicken and enrich the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the milk gradually, stirring until smooth. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets starch granules disperse evenly in the roux. Adding it all at once can trap lumps of flour that never fully smooth out, leaving a grainy sauce.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, milk, egg, 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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