Name: To Roast or Bake Potatoes
Ingredients: potatoes; cold butter

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 ↓

To Roast or Bake Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

potatoes
cold butter

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Scrub and wash the potatoes until very clean, then wipe them dry.

Roast

Roast the potatoes in a Dutch oven, keeping them at a distance from the fire and turning them often.
Alternatively, bake them in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for up to 2 hours.

Serve

Serve the potatoes hot, wrapped in a napkin, with cold butter on the side.

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.

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: Form the bulk of the dish, cooking into a soft, fluffy interior as their starch gelatinises.
Cold butter: Adds richness and flavour when served on the hot potatoes, melting into the flesh.

“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.