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New Potatoes

A dish of boiled or stewed new potatoes served with butter, gravy, ketchup, or ale, sometimes baked with fish or meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

New Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and boil

  1. Clean new potatoes by rubbing them with a coarse cloth or scrubbing brush.

  2. Boil potatoes until tender, seasoning with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter, gravy, or ketchup.

  2. Alternatively, stew potatoes in ale or water seasoned with pepper and salt.

Stew with meat or fish

  1. Layer potatoes with herrings or sprats.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, sweet herbs, vinegar, and water.

  3. Layer sliced mutton or beef with potatoes and spices.

  4. Add a little water.

  5. Cover tightly and stew slowly.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  5. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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, becoming soft and starchy when boiled or stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture when melted over the cooked potatoes.
Mutton or beef
Releases juices and fat during slow stewing, flavouring the potatoes and keeping them moist.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the stewed dish.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and stew slowly. Slow, covered cooking traps steam and keeps the meat and potatoes moist while the connective tissue in the meat softens. Rushing with high heat can dry or scorch the dish.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, ketchup, vinegar, mutton):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, ketchup, vinegar, mutton. 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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