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Potatoes Baked with Cheese

A baked casserole of boiled potatoes layered with cheese, eggs, cream, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and cheese work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 959 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Potatoes Baked with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Slice the cold boiled potatoes thinly.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a buttered dish, layer the potato slices, sprinkling each layer with cheese, salt, and paprika.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the cream, then pour over the layered potatoes.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes until set and golden.

Serve

  1. Serve as a lunch dish or with boiled ham or broiled beefsteak.

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. Potato + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together959 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Cream + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + cheesetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 casserole, holding their shape as sliced layers.
Eggs
Set the custard so the layers hold together when baked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming a custard with the eggs.
Cheese
Melts into the layers and browns on top, adding savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the custard evenly over the layers. Eggs thicken as they heat, so the custard must coat all layers before baking to set into a cohesive, sliceable casserole rather than a watery or uneven one.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, cheese. 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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