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“ Kartoffeln,” or “ Erdapfehi in Saurem Rahm ” — Potatoes in Sour Cream

A German-style potato dish simmered in butter or goose lard and finished with a sour cream and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and chive work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 611 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

“ Kartoffeln,” or “ Erdapfehi in Saurem Rahm ” — Potatoes in Sour Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and slice the potatoes into ¼ inch thick slices.

Cook

  1. In a stew‑pan, melt the butter or goose lard over medium heat.

  2. Add the potatoes, salt, pepper, and chives or onion.

  3. Brown the potatoes slightly, stirring occasionally.

  4. When nearly done, beat the egg yolks with the sour cream or milk.

  5. Pour the mixture over the potatoes.

  6. Let them stew for 5 more minutes.

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 + chivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together611 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + chivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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 soften as they stew, absorbing the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sour cream mixture into a creamy sauce as it gently heats.
Sour cream
Adds richness and a tangy flavour and keeps the sauce moist.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and helps the potatoes brown lightly at the start.

The step that matters

Pour the egg and cream mixture in when nearly done. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or turn grainy if they boil or cook too hard. Adding them near the end and letting the dish stew gently keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Chivethe original
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, pepper, egg, cream. 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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