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Milanaise Potatoes

Layered boiled potatoes baked with gravy, eggs, cheese, breadcrumbs, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Milanaise Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat and strain the gravy.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the gravy, seasoning, butter, and lemon juice; bring to a boil.

  3. Stir the hot mixture into the beaten egg yolks.

Layer and bake

  1. Slice the boiled potatoes and arrange a row in a pie plate.

  2. Pour a few teaspoons of sauce over the potatoes; add another smaller row inside the first and repeat with more sauce.

  3. Continue layering until you have a low cone of sliced potatoes.

  4. Pour remaining sauce over the top, then coat with the mixed bread crumbs and cheese.

  5. Season with pepper and salt, and bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and soak up the sauce as they layer.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a rich, creamy body when gently heated.
Gravy
Supplies savoury flavour and moisture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on top during baking.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the hot mixture into the egg yolks. Adding hot liquid to yolks too quickly can scramble them. Stirring steadily while pouring in the hot sauce gently warms the yolks so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, egg, cheese, bread, butter, pepper. 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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