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Creamed Potatoes

Creamed potatoes are boiled potatoes mixed with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and seasoned with salt, pepper, and 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 ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and dice the potatoes into uniform small pieces.

  2. Boil the potatoes until tender, then drain.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring until the sauce is thick and smooth.

Combine and finish

  1. Add the drained potatoes to the sauce, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the minced 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 + milktop 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

White potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dish and its soft, starchy texture once boiled.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Makes the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. Adding cold milk all at once can leave lumps of flour. Adding it gradually while stirring lets the starch swell evenly, giving a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, milk, 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, butter, flour, milk, 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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