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Potato Scallops

A baked dish of diced potatoes in a butter, flour, and milk sauce topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Potato Scallops

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Cool the potatoes and cut them into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the butter. Stir in the flour.

  2. Gradually add the milk.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the diced potatoes.

  2. Pour the dressing over the potatoes. Top with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 set the soft, tender texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats the potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps build the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk. Adding milk slowly to the hot butter and flour mixture lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, 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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