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Stewed Potatoes

A simple potato dish simmered in water with pepper, salt, butter, and thickened with flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and slice them.

  2. Rinse the slices in hot water.

Stew and thicken

  1. Place the potatoes in a saucepan with enough boiling water to create gravy.

  2. When nearly done, season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little butter.

  3. Thicken the mixture with a flour batter.

  4. Let it boil for two to three minutes 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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 soften as they simmer in the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy when mixed into a batter.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with a flour batter. Flour must be mixed smooth into a batter before it goes in, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens the liquid as it heats, so the gravy needs to boil briefly to reach full thickness.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour. 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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