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Baked Potatoes

Baked potatoes are potatoes baked with salt, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Baked 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. Slice the potatoes.

  2. Soak the sliced potatoes in cold water for a while.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the potatoes in a baking dish.

  2. Season the potatoes with coarse sea salt.

  3. Add ½ cup of milk to the dish.

  4. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until done.

  5. Top with a piece of butter before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main bulk of the dish, turning tender and starchy as they bake.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness as the potatoes cook.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavor as it melts over the hot potatoes.

The step that matters

Soaking the sliced potatoes. Soaking washes away loose surface starch, which helps slices cook evenly and keeps them from sticking together or turning gummy. Soak them long enough to remove that surface starch before baking.

“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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