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Stewed Potatoes

A simple potato dish stewed with butter, milk, and optional cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

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

Stewed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and cut each potato into four parts.

Stew the potatoes

  1. Place the potatoes in a saucepan and add salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. Pour in enough milk to prevent burning, adding cream if available.

  3. Cover the saucepan and stew the potatoes until soft and tender.

Alternative method

  1. For previously boiled or steamed potatoes, slice them thinly, season, and dredge with flour.

  2. Fry the slices in butter or olive oil for five minutes, then drain the fat.

  3. Add 2 cups of flavored gravy and let them stew for twenty minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dish, softening as they stew to a tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour as it coats the potatoes.
Milk
Supplies liquid so the potatoes stew gently without scorching.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the milk-based liquid, if used.
Flour (in the method)
Dusts the slices so they brown and thicken the coating when fried.

The step that matters

Cover and stew until tender. Enough liquid must stay in the pan so the potatoes do not scorch, while low, covered heat lets the starch soften the flesh evenly. Too little liquid or too high heat can burn the bottom before the centre is tender.

“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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