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Baked Potatoes with Anchovies

A baked potato dish layered with anchovies, hard‑boiled eggs, sour cream, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Baked Potatoes with Anchovies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Peel, boil, and slice the potatoes.

  2. Season the potatoes with coarse sea salt.

  3. Wash the anchovies, then remove the skin and bones.

  4. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into quarters.

  5. Butter a deep baking dish thickly.

Assemble

  1. Layer the sliced potatoes in the bottom and moisten with sour cream.

  2. Add a layer of eggs and anchovies, alternating until the dish is full.

  3. Finish with a layer of potatoes on top, moisten with sour cream, and sprinkle with bread crumbs and a small piece of butter.

Bake

  1. Wipe off the edges and bake for 15 minutes at 350°F (175°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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 dish, becoming soft and creamy as they bake.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savory depth that seasons the layers from within.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, rich texture that contrasts with the potatoes and fish.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, keeping the layers from drying out in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top crumbs brown.

The step that matters

Moisten each layer with sour cream. Potatoes absorb liquid as they bake, and without enough sour cream between layers the dish can turn dry and dense rather than moist and creamy.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, bread, butter. 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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