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Potatoes Au Gratin

Layered boiled potatoes baked with cream, flour, egg yolks, cheese, peppers, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Potatoes Au Gratin

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 Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sauce

  1. Rub together the butter and flour in a fry‑pan until smooth.

  2. Add the stock and cream, stirring until it boils, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, cheese, and seasonings.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer sauce, chopped peppers, and sliced potatoes in a baking dish.

  2. Repeat layers, finishing with sauce on top.

  3. Sprinkle bread crumbs and small pieces of butter over the top.

  4. Bake at 400 °F (200 °C) until brown.

  5. Serve from 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps the top brown richly in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the potatoes instead of running off.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it a smooth, custard-like body.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, keeping it silky and moist.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce and browns on top, adding savoriness.
Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish, absorbing the sauce as they bake until tender.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce until it boils. Egg yolks are added later to the sauce, so the flour-thickened base must be fully boiled to cook the starch. Adding yolks to a boiling sauce can scramble them, so the sauce should be removed from heat before they go in.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour, egg, milk, butter, cheese, pepper):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, egg, milk, butter, cheese, pepper. 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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