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Baked Hashed Potatoes, with Cream

A baked potato dish with cream sauce, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, topped with breadcrumbs and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Hashed Potatoes, with Cream

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. Prepare the potatoes as directed in No. 1167.

  2. When the cream is nearly reduced, add 2 tablespoons of cream sauce and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Toss the mixture well and transfer it to a buttered baking dish.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle fresh bread crumbs over the top and place a piece of butter on top.

  2. Wipe off the edges of the dish and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

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

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

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 hold the creamy sauce.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness so the potatoes stay tender rather than dry.
Fresh bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the cream sauce when the cream is nearly reduced. Reducing cream concentrates its fat and thickens it, so adding it at this stage coats the potatoes without making the mixture watery or runny in the dish.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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