Skip to main content
Main

Vienna Potatoes

A creamy potato dish with baked potatoes, cream, flour, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Vienna Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the cold baked potatoes and remove any brown spots.

  2. Cut the potatoes into dice.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Mix the flour and butter until smooth, then add to the hot cream.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the diced potatoes and stir until coated with the cream.

  2. Heat through on the stove and 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cold baked potatoes
Form the body of the dish, holding their shape while absorbing the cream.
Thin cream
Provides moisture and richness, coating the potatoes as it heats.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it clings to the potatoes instead of running off.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, helping the flour blend into the cream without lumps.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour and butter into the hot cream. Adding a flour and butter paste to hot cream without first smoothing it can leave lumps. Mixing until smooth lets the starch thicken the cream evenly, so the sauce coats the potatoes.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Spinachfits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, butter, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes