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New Potatoes in Butter

Boiled new potatoes cooked in butter and seasoned with sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

New Potatoes in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub off the skins, wash the potatoes well, and wipe them dry.

Cook in butter

  1. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes and butter.

  2. Simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes, shaking or tossing occasionally.

  3. Add salt when the potatoes begin to stew.

Boil and serve

  1. Alternatively, boil the washed and peeled potatoes in cold water until tender.

  2. Drain the water, sprinkle with salt, and place each potato in a clean warm cloth.

  3. Twist the cloth to remove moisture and shape the potatoes.

  4. Serve immediately, covered with a cloth to keep warm.

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 + 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

New potatoes
Provide the starchy base that becomes soft and tender when simmered or boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the potatoes as they cook gently in the saucepan.

The step that matters

Simmer gently over low heat. Low heat cooks the potatoes through without scorching the butter or breaking the potatoes apart. Occasional shaking coats them evenly and helps prevent sticking.

“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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