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Scalloped Potatoes

Layered thinly sliced potatoes with butter, sea salt, cracker crumbs, milk, and optional beaten egg, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and layer

  1. Pare and slice the raw potatoes thinly.

  2. Butter a pudding dish and layer in the potatoes, seasoning with coarse sea salt and bits of butter.

  3. Add a layer of cracker crumbs, then another layer of potatoes, repeating until the dish is nearly full.

Add liquid and bake

  1. Fill the dish with milk and sprinkle cracker crumbs on top.

  2. If desired, add a beaten egg for extra richness.

  3. Bake for 2 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, layered body as they cook.
Milk
Provides the liquid that cooks into a creamy sauce around the potato slices.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown.
Cracker crumbs
Add starch and a toasted topping that browns and helps thicken the surrounding liquid.
Beaten egg
Thickens the milk mixture as it sets and adds richness to the custard-like sauce.

The step that matters

Fill with milk and bake low and slow. The milk must cover the potatoes so they cook evenly in the liquid; a long, gentle bake at low heat lets the starch soften fully and the sauce thicken without scorching or curdling.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg. 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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