Name: Potato Mould
Ingredients: 650 g butter; 4 medium potatoes; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Butter and potato 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 ↓

Potato Mould

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

650 g butter
4 medium potatoes
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Wash and peel the potatoes, then cut them into slices about 1/8 inch thick.

Layer and bake

Arrange the potato slices in layers in a mold, seasoning each layer lightly with coarse sea salt and sprinkling with melted butter. Continue layering until the mold is full and well packed.
Place the mold in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) and bake for 50 to 80 minutes.

Serve

Once done, turn the contents of the mold onto a hot dish and serve immediately.

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.

Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Butter: Melted butter coats the layers, adding richness and moisture while the potatoes cook.
Potatoes: Thin slices stack and bake into the body of the dish, becoming tender as they cook.

“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.