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Baked Potatoes and Cheese

Baked potato skins filled with a creamy cheese, butter, salt, pepper, and hot milk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Baked Potatoes and Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Scrub the potatoes thoroughly with a vegetable brush.

  2. Cut off one end of each potato.

  3. Oil the potato skins slightly.

Bake

  1. Bake the potatoes in a 400°F (200°C) oven until tender, then remove them from the oven.

Fill and brown

  1. Carefully scoop out the pulp without breaking the skin.

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup of potato pulp with cheese, butter, salt, white pepper, and hot milk until creamy.

  3. Fill the potato skins with the mixture.

  4. Return the filled skins to the oven to brown the tops and heat through.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  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
Provide the sturdy skins that hold the filling and the starchy pulp that becomes fluffy and creamy.
Cheese
Melts into the filling and browns on top, adding rich savory flavor.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier texture in the filling.
Hot milk
Adds moisture so the mashed pulp becomes spreadable and creamy.

The step that matters

Scooping the pulp without breaking the skin. The skins must stay intact to hold the filling. A tear lets the creamy mixture leak out and bake unevenly, so scoop slowly and leave a thin layer of potato inside each shell.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cheese, butter, milk):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cheese, butter, milk. 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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