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Creamed Potatoes

A creamy potato side dish made with cream, milk, cornstarch, butter, salt, pepper, and diced boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a frying pan, combine the cream and milk and bring to a boil.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the cornstarch with the cold milk until smooth, then pour into the boiling cream mixture to thicken.

  3. Boil for one minute, then season with butter, salt, and pepper.

Add the potatoes

  1. Add the diced cold boiled potatoes and cook for three to four minutes until heated through.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  5. Butter + potatotop 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

Cream
Adds richness and body, so the sauce feels smooth and full.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce along with the cream.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling liquid as its starch swells, giving the sauce body.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the substance of the dish, absorbing the sauce and becoming tender as they heat.

The step that matters

Stirring cornstarch into the boiling cream. Cornstarch must be fully smooth before it goes into the hot liquid, or it clumps. Boiling it briefly after adding it lets the starch swell fully so the sauce thickens evenly.

“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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