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Scalloped Potatoes

A baked dish of sliced potatoes layered with cream sauce and buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped 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. Butter a baking dish.

Layer

  1. Cover the bottom with a layer of cooked sliced cold potatoes.

  2. Add a layer of cream sauce.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  4. Sprinkle buttered crumbs over the top.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned.

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

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Cooked sliced cold potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and hold the body of the casserole.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness that softens the potatoes as they bake.
Buttered crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crumbs brown and keeps the dish from sticking.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. The bake needs to run long enough for the crumb topping to brown and the sauce to heat through and set. Pulling it early leaves the centre loose and the top pale.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Onionfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, 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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