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Potatoes, Savoury

A baked potato dish with a creamy herb sauce made from butter, onion, flour, stock, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Potatoes, Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Half-boil the potatoes and cut them into slices a quarter of an inch thick.

  2. In a stewpan, dissolve the butter (or fat bacon) over medium heat.

  3. Add the minced onion and stew until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Dredge in the flour and stir until smooth and brown.

  2. Gradually pour in boiling stock or water to achieve a creamy sauce consistency.

  3. Add thyme, marjoram, parsley, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and bay leaf.

  4. Let the sauce simmer for a few minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sliced potatoes and cook until tender but not broken.

  2. Turn the mixture onto a dish and serve very hot.

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. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Marjoram + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  5. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, once cooked tender, give it body and soft texture.
Butter
Provides fat for cooking the onion and carries flavor through the sauce.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the fat.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, creamy sauce that coats the potatoes.

The step that matters

Add the sliced potatoes and cook until tender but not broken. Starch from the potatoes thickens the sauce, but over-vigorous stirring or boiling can break the slices apart. Gentle simmering keeps them intact while they soften.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, flour, sauce, thyme, marjoram, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, flour, sauce, thyme, marjoram, parsley. 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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