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Oscar Potatoes

A baked dish of sliced potatoes and tart apples sweetened with sugar and butter, baked until syrupy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Oscar Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Steam the potatoes until nearly done.

  2. Peel and cut the potatoes into ½ inch thick slices.

  3. Slice the tart apples.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the potatoes and apples alternately in a baking dish, with potatoes on top.

  2. Add sugar to taste, bits of butter, salt, and a little water.

  3. Bake until a thick syrup forms and the potatoes are brown on top.

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

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

  2. Potato + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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
Form the bulk of the dish and turn tender and browned as they bake.
Tart apples
Add acidity and moisture that break down into a syrup with the sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps form the thick syrup and browning on top.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, enriching the flavor and helping the top brown.

The step that matters

Bake until a thick syrup forms and the potatoes are brown on top. Baking long enough lets the apple and sugar juices thicken into a syrup and lets the surface brown. Underbaking leaves the dish watery, while overbaking can dry the potatoes out.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, 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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