Name: Potatoes, Stuffed
Ingredients: large potatoes; mealy potatoes; chopped parsley; chives; shallot; butter; fat bacon, diced; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Chive and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Potatoes, Stuffed

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.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Hollow out some large potatoes.
In a bowl, mash mealy potatoes with chopped parsley, chives, shallot, butter, diced bacon, pepper, and salt.
Butter the insides of the hollowed potatoes and fill them with the potato mixture.
Place the stuffed potatoes on a buttered baking sheet and bake until browned.
Serve 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.

Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + chivetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together611 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, chive, shallot, butter, pepper):

Leekfits better
Welsh onionfits better
Kalefits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, chive, shallot, butter, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.