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Escaloped Potatoes

Layered baked potatoes with cream sauce, parsley, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Escaloped Potatoes

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter an escalop dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the bottom with cream sauce.

  2. Add a layer of sliced potatoes.

  3. Sprinkle with parsley.

  4. Moisten with sauce.

  5. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with a layer of cream sauce.

  6. Cover with bread crumbs.

  7. Dot with butter.

  8. Bake for 20 minutes.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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 soften as they bake in the sauce.
Cream sauce
Provides moisture and richness that keeps the layers from drying out.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning on the crumb topping and flavour.

The step that matters

Finishing with a layer of cream sauce. Sauce must reach every layer and cover the top so the potatoes cook evenly and do not dry out or scorch under the crumbs during baking.

Swap the potato

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

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

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