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Cheese Potatoes

A baked casserole of boiled potatoes layered with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cheese Potatoes

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 the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Let the boiled potatoes cool.

  3. Chop the cooled potatoes into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the cold milk, stirring constantly.

  4. Stir until the sauce thickens.

  5. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chopped potatoes in a baking dish.

  2. Pour some sauce over the potatoes.

  3. Sprinkle grated cheese on top.

  4. Repeat the layers until the dish is full.

  5. Finish with cheese on the top layer.

  6. Add a few pieces of butter on top.

  7. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  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 + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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 casserole and give it a soft, starchy body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds flavor and browning on top.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that binds the layers together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving creaminess and moisture.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and melts into the layers, browning on top.

The step that matters

Stir in the cold milk gradually. Adding cold milk slowly while stirring constantly lets the starch in the flour disperse evenly. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps that don't smooth out, leaving the sauce grainy.

Swap the potato

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

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

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