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Creamed Potatoes

Creamed potatoes are boiled potatoes mixed with cream sauce, seasoned, and simmered or stewed with milk and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 3 cups diced boiled potatoes with 1 pint cream sauce in a pot.

  2. Add seasoning to taste and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Alternatively, season cold sliced potatoes, cover with milk, and stew until the milk is reduced by half.

  4. Add a little butter 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and absorb the sauce, giving it body.
Cream sauce
Supplies richness and a creamy, coating texture as it heats with the potatoes.
Milk
Provides liquid for the alternative method, which stews the potatoes until the liquid reduces.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, rich flavour when stirred in just before serving.

The step that matters

Simmering the potatoes in the sauce. Simmering gently keeps the cream sauce smooth and prevents it from scorching or breaking on the bottom of the pot. Stirring helps the potatoes heat evenly without breaking apart.

“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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