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Bacon and Potatoes with Cheese

A baked casserole of sliced potatoes, bacon, onions, herbs, and optional cheese sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bacon and Potatoes with Cheese

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

  1. Grease a pie dish.

Assemble

  1. Layer sliced potatoes, sprinkle with salt, pepper, onion, and herbs.

  2. Add thin slices of bacon, repeating layers until ingredients are used, finishing with potatoes on top.

  3. Dredge with bread crumbs and drizzle with bacon fat.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot, with or without gravy or cheese sauce.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 soften as they bake.
Bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour and fat that seasons the layers.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when baked with the fat.
Bacon fat
Moistens the topping and promotes browning in the oven.
Onion
Contributes sweetness and aroma as it cooks between the layers.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Potato slices must cook through while the crumb topping browns. Too short a bake leaves the potatoes firm in the centre, while over-baking dries the dish and darkens the topping too far.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, onion, bread, cheese, sauce):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, onion, bread, cheese, sauce. 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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