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Potatos Baked in Cups

Baked potato cups made by mashing potatoes with butter, seasoning, and baking in cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potatos Baked in Cups

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. Mash the potatoes with butter and season with coarse sea salt and pepper.

  2. Butter some earthen tea cups and fill them with the prepared potato mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until heated through.

  2. Shape the potatoes in cups or bowls.

  3. Brush with beaten egg.

  4. Brown in the oven or before the fire.

  5. If not using egg, dredge with wheat flour and baste with a little butter before baking.

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 + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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 cups and set into a soft interior once heated.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mash and helps the surface brown.
Beaten egg
Brushed on the surface to promote browning and a glossy finish.
Wheat flour
Dredged over the surface when no egg is used, helping the exterior brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Brown in the oven or before the fire. Surface browning relies on dry, sustained heat that drives the Maillard reaction. If the cups are removed too early, they heat through but stay pale and soft on top.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, egg, wheat, flour. 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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