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Escalloped Potatoes with Peppers

Layered potatoes, peppers, and cream sauce baked with buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Escalloped Potatoes with Peppers

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the potatoes into 1-inch cubes.

  2. Layer half of the potatoes in a buttered baking dish.

  3. Mix the minced onion, red pepper, green pepper, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  4. Add a layer of the pepper mixture over the potatoes.

  5. Repeat with the remaining potatoes and pepper mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the cream sauce over the layers.

  2. Melt the butter.

  3. Mix the melted butter with the bread crumbs, then sprinkle on top.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  5. 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 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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and become tender and soft when baked.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness that coats the layers and keeps them from drying out.
Bread crumbs
Form a buttered topping that browns and adds a crisp contrast to the soft layers.
Red pepper and green pepper
Add sweetness, color and a fresh vegetable flavor between the potato layers.

The step that matters

Layering the potatoes and pepper mixture. Building even layers lets the cream sauce soak evenly through the potatoes while they bake, so the dish cooks uniformly and does not turn dry in some spots and watery in others.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cream, sauce, pepper, parsley, butter, bread):

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cream, sauce, pepper, parsley, butter, bread. 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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