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Boiled Potatoes

Boiled potatoes cooked in salted water, served plain or mashed with butter, cream, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Boiled Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the new potatoes instead of peeling them.

  2. Soak new potatoes in cold water for 4-5 hours before cooking.

Boil and dry

  1. Boil water with a small handful of coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the potatoes to the boiling water and cook until they show a tendency to crack.

  3. Pour off the water and let the potatoes stand uncovered near the fire to dry.

Serve

  1. For mashed potatoes, break the boiled potatoes into a paste and season with butter, salt, and cream or milk.

  2. If there are leftovers, press them down in a dish, refrigerate overnight, then cut into slices and fry in butter with pepper and chopped parsley.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + buttertop 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

New potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, which softens when boiled and breaks into a paste when mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and browns when the leftover slices are fried.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess to mashed potatoes.

The step that matters

Cooking until they show a tendency to crack. Stop at this point because potatoes that are overcooked will fall apart and become waterlogged. Starch granules swell as they cook, so timing determines whether the potatoes hold their shape or turn mushy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, 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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