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Spanish Potatoes

A baked potato casserole with onions, peppers, cheese, and a white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Spanish Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the filling

  1. Cook the diced potatoes and minced onion in salted water until the potatoes are tender.

  2. Add the chopped Spanish peppers and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  3. Drain the mixture and fill a baking dish.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, make a white sauce by melting the butter, then whisking in the flour, salt, pepper, and milk until smooth.

  2. Stir in the grated cheese until melted, then pour the sauce over the potatoes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 casserole and soften into a tender base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base for the white sauce.
Milk
Liquid that becomes the creamy body of the white sauce.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce for richness, creaminess, and browning on top.

The step that matters

Whisking the white sauce until smooth. Flour must be fully dispersed in the melted butter before the milk goes in, and the mixture needs to be whisked as it thickens. Otherwise the starch clumps and the sauce stays lumpy instead of becoming a smooth, even coating.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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