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Scalloped Potatoes

A baked potato dish with a creamy sauce, topped with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Scalloped Potatoes

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 sauce

  1. Combine milk, flour, and butter in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Layer potatoes in a baking dish, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper.

  2. Pour some cream dressing over each layer.

  3. Continue layering until all ingredients are used.

  4. Top with rolled cracker crumbs and bits of butter.

Bake

  1. 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.

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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 and become tender as they cook in the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that coats and moistens the potatoes.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness to the sauce and browns the crumb topping in the oven.
Rolled cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping through browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thickened. Flour only thickens once the mixture is heated enough for its starch to swell. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce that pools at the bottom of the dish instead of coating the layers.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, 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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