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Escalloped Potatoes

Thinly sliced potatoes layered with butter, flour, and breadcrumbs, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Escalloped 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

  1. Wash, peel, and slice the potatoes very thinly to cover the bottom of a baking dish.

Layer and season

  1. Sprinkle salt, pepper, dots of butter, and flour over the first layer of potatoes.

  2. Add another layer of potatoes and repeat the seasoning.

  3. Once all potatoes are layered, sprinkle buttered crumbs on top.

  4. Add milk to nearly cover the potatoes.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about one hour, or until tender.

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. Bread + milktop 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

Potatoes
Form the main body of the dish and become tender and soft as they bake.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a creamy sauce that binds the layers together.
Milk
Cooks around the potatoes to create a creamy, sauce-like base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Layering the potatoes thinly and evenly. Thin, even slices cook through at the same rate, so the potatoes become tender within the baking time. Thick or uneven slices can stay firm in the middle while the top overbrowns.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

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