Skip to main content
Main

Favorite Warmed Potatoes

Boiled potatoes are sliced, seasoned, and simmered in butter and milk until warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Favorite Warmed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes whole with skins on in salted water until just tender.

  2. Let them cool and peel the skins off.

  3. Slice the potatoes into ¼‑inch thick slices and place them in a bowl.

  4. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper, then chop them into small square pieces.

Make and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat, then add the milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Add the chopped potatoes to the boiling milk, stir gently to coat, then cover and reduce heat to low.

  3. Heat the potatoes through gradually, stirring carefully from the bottom before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, absorbing the buttery milk and becoming soft and tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the potatoes a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Whole milk
Provides moisture and creaminess, forming a sauce that coats the potato pieces.

The step that matters

Adding the chopped potatoes to the boiling milk. Once the milk is at a boil, the potatoes can scorch on the bottom or the milk can boil over. Reducing the heat to low and stirring gently keeps the milk from sticking and lets the potatoes warm evenly without breaking apart.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, milk. 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