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Potatoes Au Gratin

A baked dish of diced potatoes layered with cheese and a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Potatoes Au Gratin

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Potatoes Au Gratin

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.

Make the white sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for a minute without browning.

  3. Gradually add hot milk, whisking until smooth.

  4. Add salt and paprika, and cook until thickened.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer diced potatoes, sprinkle with cheese, and cover with white sauce.

  2. Repeat layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with white sauce and cheese on top.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 dish, absorbing the sauce and cooking into a soft, tender body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and helps the flour cook into a smooth base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that holds the layers together.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, giving it a creamy, pourable body.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce and browns on top, adding savoury richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. The flour must cook briefly without browning so it loses its raw taste and thickens properly. Browning it changes the flavour, and skipping the cooking leaves a pasty sauce. Adding hot milk gradually while whisking prevents lumps from forming.

“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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