Name: Baked Hashed Potatoes, with Cream
Ingredients: Potatoes (prepared as in recipe No. 1167); ½ cup cream; 2 tablespoons cream sauce; Coarse sea salt (to taste); Black pepper (to taste); A pinch of nutmeg; Fresh bread crumbs (for topping); 2 tablespoons butter (for topping)

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Baked Hashed Potatoes, with Cream

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 the potatoes as directed in recipe No. 1167.
In a saucepan, reduce the cream nearly by half.
Add the cream sauce, salt, pepper, and nutmeg to the cream, and mix well.
Combine the potato mixture with the cream mixture and toss well.
Transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish.
Sprinkle fresh bread crumbs on top and place pieces of butter over them.
Wipe the edges of the dish and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,052 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, pepper, nutmeg, bread, butter):

Capsicumfits about as well
Spinachfits about as well
Shallotfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, pepper, nutmeg, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.