Name: Creamed Potatoes
Ingredients: potatoes; milk; Vegetable Sauce

Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

potatoes
milk
Vegetable Sauce

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

Scrub and rinse the potatoes.
Cook the potatoes with skins on in boiling water until tender.
Drain, dry, peel, and cut the potatoes into small cubes.

Make and serve

Prepare the Vegetable Sauce using all milk for the liquid.
Add ½ cup of cooked potatoes to the sauce.
Heat the mixture 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.

Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,073 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + saucetop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,759 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Provide the starchy base that becomes the bulk of the creamed dish.
Milk: Supplies the liquid that makes the sauce smooth and creamy.