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Stewed Potatoes

Stewed potatoes are boiled potatoes simmered in milk or cream with salt and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare small potatoes to equal size.

  2. Cover with cold water and boil for 2 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Add new milk or cream and a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Cook slowly until tender.

  3. Sprinkle with parsley and serve very hot.

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + parsleytop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,011 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Small potatoes
Form the body of the dish, becoming tender and soaking up the cream as they cook.
New milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture, creating a silky sauce as it cooks down around the potatoes.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until tender. Gentle heat lets the potatoes cook through evenly without breaking apart, and keeps the milk or cream from scorching or curdling on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk. 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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