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Potatoes with Gravy.

Potatoes cooked in stock and served with rich brown gravy or thin demi‑glace sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potatoes with Gravy.

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes, then cut them into small quenelle shapes.

  2. Arrange the potatoes in a flat stew-pan.

Cook

  1. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, adding the parsley and onions with cloves.

  2. Cover the potatoes with stock and bring to a boil.

  3. Simmer in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes until the stock is absorbed.

Serve

  1. Dress the potatoes in a deep dish and pour over rich brown gravy or thin demi-glace sauce before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 stock, becoming tender and soft as they cook.
Stock
Cooks the potatoes through and is absorbed, carrying seasoning into them.
Rich brown gravy or thin demi-glace sauce
Adds savory depth and a glossy, meaty moisture to the finished potatoes.

The step that matters

Simmer until the stock is absorbed. Stopping too early leaves the potatoes watery and underdone, while cooking too long can break them down and dry them out. The starch in the potatoes softens as they absorb the liquid, so timing and a gentle simmer matter.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, parsley, onion, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, parsley, onion, sauce. 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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