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Potatoes Baked in Milk

A baked potato dish cooked in milk, butter, and cream, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potatoes Baked in Milk

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. Wash, peel, and slice the potatoes, then soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Place the potatoes in a pudding dish and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add enough milk to nearly cover the potatoes.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour.

  2. Remove from the oven, scatter bits of butter on top, and pour in the heavy cream.

  3. Return to the oven for an additional 10 minutes.

  4. Serve in the baking dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

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

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

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 into a tender, layered texture as they bake.
Milk
Cooks around the potatoes to create a moist, creamy sauce as it reduces.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished sauce a smoother, silkier body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the top layer, helping it turn golden as it bakes.

The step that matters

Add the cream after the first bake. Cream added before the potatoes are tender and the milk has thickened can curdle or stay thin. Adding it after the hour in the oven lets the potatoes soften first, then the cream enriches the sauce during the final bake.

“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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