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Escalloped Potatoes

Layered sliced potatoes with cream sauce, parsley, and breadcrumbs, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the sliced potatoes with salt and pepper.

  3. Butter a baking dish and cover the bottom with a layer of cream sauce.

Layer and bake

  1. Add a layer of potatoes and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

  2. Repeat layering with sauce and potatoes until the dish is filled.

  3. Finish with cream sauce on top and sprinkle with bread crumbs mixed with small bits of butter.

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, becoming tender and soaking up the sauce as they bake.
Cream sauce
Supplies moisture and richness that keeps the layers creamy rather than dry.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the bread crumb topping brown.

The step that matters

Layering the sauce and potatoes. Enough cream sauce must reach between every layer, because cooked potatoes absorb liquid as they heat. Skimping on sauce leaves the dish dry and the potatoes firm rather than creamy.

Swap the potato

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

  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 pepper, butter, cream, sauce, parsley, 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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