Skip to main content
Main

Scalloped Potatoes

A baked potato dish with cream, butter, and salt, topped with butter and broiled until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

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. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes with cream, butter, and salt.

Shape and brown

  1. Spoon the mixture into scalloped shells and smooth the top.

  2. Score the top with a knife and place small bits of butter on top.

  3. Brown the potatoes under a broiler or in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

White, mealy potatoes
Their starch breaks down into a soft, fluffy mash that holds its shape.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the mashed potatoes stay smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps the top brown as it melts.

The step that matters

Brown the potatoes under a broiler or in a 400°F (200°C) oven. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs dry surface heat. Watch closely under a broiler, since the top can scorch quickly before the surface turns golden.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes