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Escaloped Potatoes

Layered baked potatoes with a milk, flour, and butter sauce, topped with breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Escaloped Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the sauce

  1. Mix milk, flour, and butter in a saucepan until smooth.

  2. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer sauce in the bottom of a baking dish.

  2. Add a layer of thinly sliced boiled potatoes.

  3. Repeat the layers, finishing with sauce on top.

  4. Sprinkle with fine bread crumbs.

  5. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce that coats and moistens the potatoes.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that holds the layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, helping it taste full and brown lightly.
Boiled potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the dish, softening as they bake in the sauce.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping on the surface during baking.

The step that matters

Make the sauce smooth before layering. Flour lumps in the sauce will not dissolve in the oven, so the flour must be fully mixed with the milk and butter. Stirring the sauce until smooth lets the starch thicken evenly, so the layers bind rather than separate into wet and dry pockets.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, butter, pepper, bread):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, butter, pepper, bread. 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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