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Escaloped Potatoes

Thinly sliced potatoes layered with butter, pepper, salt, milk, and optional crumbs, 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 bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Escaloped Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut raw potatoes into thin slices.

  2. Layer the slices in a buttered pudding dish.

  3. Sprinkle each layer with pepper, coarse sea salt, and bits of butter.

  4. Fill the dish three-fourths full.

Bake

  1. Cover with milk and bake at 300°F (150°C) for two hours.

  2. Optionally, add bread or cracker crumbs on top 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 tender layers as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the layers.
Milk
Provides liquid that cooks the potatoes gently and forms the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Covering with milk and baking slowly. Low, slow heat lets the potato starch soften fully and the milk thicken without curdling or scorching. Cooking too hot can dry the top and leave the potatoes firm inside.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, milk, bread. 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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