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New Potatoes and Cream

Boiled new potatoes tossed in butter, cream, parsley, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

New Potatoes and Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and scrub the new potatoes with a coarse cloth or scrubbing brush.

  2. Drop the potatoes into boiling water and boil until tender.

  3. Press a potato against the side of the kettle with a fork; if it yields to gentle pressure, it's done.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat butter and cream until hot but not boiling.

  2. Add chopped parsley, pepper, and salt to the butter and cream mixture.

Combine and serve

  1. Drain the potatoes, add the butter and cream mixture, and place over hot water for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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

New potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, with a tender, starchy interior that soaks up the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Cream
Adds body and a silky texture that coats the potatoes.

The step that matters

Heating the butter and cream. Heating only until hot, not boiling, keeps the cream from scorching or splitting, so the sauce stays smooth and coats the potatoes evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, parsley, 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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