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Puree De Pommes De Terre.

A creamy potato purée with onion, celery, butter, stock, and cream, served hot with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Puree De Pommes De Terre.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and chop the potatoes and onion.

Cook

  1. In a pot, melt the butter and add the potatoes, onion, and celery.

  2. Cook until softened, then add the stock.

  3. Simmer until the potatoes are tender.

Blend and serve

  1. Blend the mixture until smooth, then stir in the cream and season with salt.

  2. Serve hot with fried bread.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 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
Starch that breaks down when cooked, giving the purée its thick, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavour as the onion and celery soften.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, rounding out the texture of the blended purée.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the vegetables and keeps the purée loose enough to blend.

The step that matters

Blend until smooth. Potatoes that are not fully tender will blend unevenly and stay grainy. Once they are soft, blending breaks the cell walls and releases starch, which makes the purée smooth and creamy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, butter, cream, bread. 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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