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Stewed Potatoes with Parsley

A simple stew of potatoes simmered in a butter‑flour gravy with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Stewed Potatoes with Parsley

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and cook until light yellow.

  3. Stir in enough water or stock to create a smooth mixture.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

Cook the potatoes

  1. Slice the raw potatoes.

  2. Add the sliced potatoes to the gravy.

  3. Boil for five minutes.

  4. Cover and transfer to a low oven (300 °F / 150 °C) to finish cooking.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the base of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the butter.
Potatoes
Form the body of the dish, softening as they cook in the gravy.

The step that matters

Stirring in the liquid to a smooth mixture. Adding water or stock to the cooked flour and butter too quickly or without stirring can leave lumps. Stirring as the liquid goes in keeps the starch dispersed so the gravy thickens evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, parsley. 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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