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New Potatoes, a LA Creme

Creamed new potatoes with cream, butter, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, and salt, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

New Potatoes, a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the boiled new potatoes.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes, cream, butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Heat on the stove, tossing gently until well mixed.

  3. Serve with croutons.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

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 and absorb the cream and butter.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture that coats the potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a glossy mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and butter.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm aromatic note that complements the cream.

The step that matters

Heating and tossing gently. Cream can curdle or separate when it boils hard or is heated too fast. Gentle heat and slow tossing keep the sauce smooth and coat the potatoes without breaking them.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, nutmeg, pepper, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, nutmeg, pepper, lemon. 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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