Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Potatoes, Baked
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Choose large potatoes of uniform size.
Wash them well in lukewarm water and scrub the skins with a soft brush.
Dry them thoroughly.
Bake and serve
Put them in a 400°F (200°C) oven and bake until done.
Do not let them remain in the oven after they are cooked to avoid hardening.
Serve on a hot napkin neatly folded and send pats of butter to the table with them.
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.
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Large potatoes
- Provide the starchy flesh that cooks soft and fluffy in the dry heat of the oven.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture to the hot potato flesh when served.
The step that matters
Remove the potatoes as soon as they are cooked. Potatoes left in the oven keep losing moisture as they sit, so the flesh dries out and hardens. Taking them out promptly keeps the inside soft and fluffy.
“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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