Name: Potatoes a LA Maitre d'Hotel
Ingredients: 1 pint potato balls; 1 cup milk; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 egg yolk; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; salt

Why it works: Potato and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,611 recipes mention both. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Cook the potatoes

Cook potato balls in boiling salted water for 10 minutes.
Drain the potatoes and add milk.

Make the sauce and serve

Cream the butter in a bowl.
Add the egg yolk and mix well.
Stir in the lemon juice and combine with the potatoes.
Serve hot.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Potato + milktop 4% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together81,222 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + buttertop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,445 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,229 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together19,048 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato balls: Form the main body of the dish and carry the sauce.
Milk: Adds moisture and a softer, creamier texture to the potatoes.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, giving the dish a smooth, buttery coating.
Egg yolk: Helps bind the butter and milk into a smooth, thickened mixture.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter flavor.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

Vanillabetter flavor fit
Coconutbetter flavor fit
Peachabout as good a flavor fit
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.