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Baked Potatoes with Anchovies

A baked potato dish layered with anchovies, hard‑boiled eggs, sour cream, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Potatoes with Anchovies

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. Peel, boil, and slice the potatoes.

  2. Wash the anchovies, then remove the skin and bones.

  3. Cut the hard-boiled eggs into quarters.

  4. Butter a deep baking dish thickly.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer sliced potatoes in the bottom and moisten with sour cream.

  2. Add a layer of eggs and anchovies, alternating until the dish is full.

  3. Finish with a layer of potatoes on top, moisten with sour cream, and sprinkle with breadcrumbs and small pieces of butter.

  4. Wipe the edges of the dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 bulk of the dish and soften into a tender, starchy base as they bake.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth that flavours the layers as they cook.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a rich, creamy texture between the potato layers.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, keeping the layers from drying out in the oven.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden top layer as the dish bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dish and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Layer and bake. Moistening each potato layer with sour cream keeps the potatoes from drying out during baking. Wiping the dish edges keeps them from scorching or burning onto the dish.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, 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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