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Potatoes Au Gratin

A baked dish of boiled potatoes topped with cheese, milk, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potatoes Au Gratin

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 ↓

Potatoes Au Gratin

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Chop the boiled potatoes finely and fill a buttered baking dish.

Make and assemble

  1. Dissolve the cheese in the boiling hot milk.

  2. Pour the cheese mixture over the potatoes, season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cover with buttered cracker crumbs.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 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. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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 cheese sauce that moistens the potatoes.
Grated cheese
Melts into the hot milk to make a rich, savoury sauce.
Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that soaks up the sauce and sets as it bakes.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the baked dish.

The step that matters

Dissolve the cheese in the boiling hot milk. Cheese can turn grainy or stringy if it overheats or boils hard. Keeping the milk hot but not boiling, and stirring the cheese in gradually, helps it melt into a smooth sauce.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, milk, 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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