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Pommes De Terre Au Lard

Potatoes cooked with bacon, butter, flour, herbs, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Pommes De Terre Au Lard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Brown the bacon in butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add flour to the bacon.

  3. Add pepper to the mixture.

  4. Add salt to the mixture.

  5. Add sweet herbs to the mixture.

  6. Add bay leaf to the mixture.

  7. Moisten with stock and let it boil for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the half-cooked potatoes.

  2. Skim the mixture to remove foam.

  3. Serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Bacon
Renders fat and flavour into the butter, giving the dish its savoury base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce as it cooks with the butter and bacon fat.
Stock
Liquid that cooks the potatoes and forms the body of the sauce.
Potatoes
Starchy pieces that soften in the stock and absorb its flavour.

The step that matters

Skim the mixture to remove foam. Foam rising from the boiling stock carries impurities that can cloud the sauce and taste bitter if left in, so it should be skimmed off while the potatoes cook.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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

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