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Baking

French Baked Potatoes

French baked potatoes are potatoes baked, scooped, mashed with butter, salt, and milk, then refilled and browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

French Baked Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Bake the potatoes until fully cooked.

  2. Cut them in half lengthwise and remove the insides without breaking the skins.

Fill

  1. Mash the potato insides and mix with butter, coarse sea salt, and milk.

  2. Refill the potato skins with the mashed mixture.

Brown and serve

  1. Place in a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

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

  3. 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

Large smooth potatoes
Starchy flesh mashes into a fluffy filling and the skins form the serving shell.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the mash and carries flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture that keeps the mashed filling soft and smooth.

The step that matters

Remove the insides without breaking the skins. The skins act as the serving shell. Tearing them lets the filling leak out during refilling and baking, and makes the potatoes harder to hold and present neatly.

“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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