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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. Combine cream and milk in a frying pan and bring to a boil.

  2. Mix cornstarch with cold milk in a small bowl until smooth.

  3. Pour the cornstarch mixture into the boiling cream and milk to thicken.

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

Finish the potatoes

  1. Add 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
Provides rich fat and body, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Milk
Adds liquid that forms the base of the sauce and mellows its flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the boiling liquid into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form the body of the dish, absorbing the sauce and becoming tender as they heat through.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch mixture to boiling liquid. Cornstarch must be fully suspended in cold liquid before it meets heat, or it clumps. Once the boiling cream and milk thicken it, the starch gelatinises and the sauce sets smoothly. Boiling briefly ensures the starch has fully swollen and the raw starch taste is gone.

“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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