Name: Cream Potatoes with Cheese
Ingredients: 2 cups baked or boiled potatoes, diced; 1 heaping tablespoon grated cheese; ½ tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon Daniel Webster flour; 2 cups milk; brown cracker crumbs

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 ↓

Cream Potatoes with Cheese

Ingredients

2 cups baked or boiled potatoes, diced
1 heaping tablespoon grated cheese
½ tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon Daniel Webster flour
2 cups milk
brown cracker crumbs

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 sauce

Make a cream dressing by melting butter in a saucepan.
Stir in flour and gradually add milk, cooking until thickened.

Assemble and bake

Combine the dressing with the diced potatoes and grated cheese.
Transfer to a baking dish and top with brown cracker crumbs.
Heat in a 400°F (200°C) oven until warmed 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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,962 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

Baked or boiled potatoes: Form the bulk of the casserole and absorb the creamy dressing.
Milk: Forms the liquid base of the cream dressing that coats the potatoes.
Daniel webster flour: Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth dressing as it cooks.
Grated cheese: Melts into the dressing to add rich flavor and a creamy texture.
Butter: Adds fat and flavor to the base of the cream dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing until thickened. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred and heated long enough for the starch granules to swell. Stopping early leaves a thin, watery sauce that does not coat the potatoes well.

“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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Cream Potatoes with Cheese