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To Stew Potatoes

A simple stew of boiled potatoes simmered in milk with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and optional 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 ↓

To Stew Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Cut the boiled potatoes into dice and measure 1 quart.

Make the stew

  1. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Add the diced potatoes to the boiling milk and let them simmer.

  3. In a bowl, cream the butter and flour together.

  4. Add the butter and flour mixture to the potatoes, stirring until the milk thickens to a custard‑like consistency.

  5. Season with salt and a little black pepper.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the body of the stew, soaking up the milk and giving it substance.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid that thickens into a custard-like sauce around the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the stew its body.

The step that matters

Avoid overcooking the potatoes. Prolonged simmering breaks down the starch in potatoes until their cell walls collapse, leaving them mushy instead of holding their shape in the stew.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, 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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