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
Select new potatoes of equal size and scrub them clean with a brush or coarse cloth.
Cook
Place the potatoes in boiling water without adding salt and boil gently until tender.
Season and serve
Drain the water completely and sprinkle coarse sea salt over the potatoes.
Shake the saucepan gently and let the potatoes sit by the fire for 1 minute.
Serve immediately, optionally tossing with a small slice of fresh butter after it melts.
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.
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Forms the dish; boiling softens its starch so it turns tender while holding its shape.
The step that matters
Drain the water completely before salting. Water left on the potatoes dilutes the coarse salt so it does not cling, and leaves them wet. Shaking and resting let surface moisture evaporate so the salt sticks.
“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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