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Stewed Potatoes, with Bacon

A stew of sliced potatoes simmered with bacon, flour, broth, herbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes, with Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, lightly fry the bacon slices.

  2. Add the flour and cook until light brown, stirring with a wooden spoon.

  3. Dilute with the broth and bring to a boil.

Stew and serve

  1. Add the sliced potatoes, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, then let simmer for 20 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.

  3. Remove the parsley bundle and serve.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Renders fat for frying and adds savory, smoky flavor to the broth.
Flour
Cooked in the fat until light brown, it thickens the broth into a sauce.
Broth
Forms the liquid that the potatoes simmer in and carries the flavor.
Potatoes
Absorb the seasoned broth as they cook and become tender and starchy.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour until light brown. Stirring the flour in the bacon fat until it turns light brown cooks out its raw taste and builds nutty flavor. Adding broth too early leaves lumps and a floury taste.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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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