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To Broil Potatoes

Potatoes are boiled, peeled, dusted with flour, then broiled until golden and served with cold butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Broil Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. While hot, remove the skins.

Broil and serve

  1. Dust the potatoes with flour.

  2. Broil the potatoes on a grill until golden.

  3. Serve with cold butter.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooking to a tender interior that holds its shape.
Flour
Dusting the potatoes helps create a dry surface that browns more readily under heat.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the finished potatoes as a serving accompaniment.

The step that matters

Removing the skins while hot. Potatoes are easier to peel while still hot, because the skin loosens more readily before the starch sets and cools. Waiting until they cool can make the skins stick and tear the flesh.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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