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Potatoes with Cheese Sauce

Potatoes served with a cheese sauce made from melted cheese, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potatoes with Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes with salt.

  3. Form the mashed potatoes into balls or use small new potatoes boiled whole.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the cheese in a saucepan over low heat.

  2. Add the hot milk to the melted cheese and stir until combined.

  3. Thicken the cheese sauce with flour, stirring constantly until smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve the cheese sauce over the potato balls or whole potatoes.

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

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

  2. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together959 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provide the starchy base that holds the cheese sauce and gives the dish its body.
Hard cheese
Melts into the sauce to provide rich flavor and a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.
Flour
Thickens the milk and melted cheese into a smooth, cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the cheese sauce with flour. Flour must be stirred in constantly so its starch disperses evenly and gelatinizes as the sauce heats; adding it in clumps or without stirring leaves lumps and an uneven, thin texture.

“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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