Name: Potatoes Stuffed
Ingredients: 6 large potatoes; 1 lb cold meat; ½ cup gravy or sauce; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; parsley to taste; butter

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potatoes Stuffed

6 large potatoes

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

Wash and scrub the potatoes, then bake them at 400°F (200°C) until fully cooked.
Cut the potatoes in half so they can stand upright.
Scoop out the insides and mix with butter, pepper, and salt.

Fill and serve

Prepare a savory meat mixture using minced meat.
Fill the potato skins with the meat mixture and top with the scooped potato, making it look rough.
Return to the oven until heated through, then serve.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 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).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Form the base and bulk of the dish, holding the filling when the flesh is scooped out.
Cold meat: Provides the savory filling and main protein of the dish.
Gravy or sauce: Adds moisture and flavour to the meat so the filling does not dry out.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the mashed potato topping.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, pepper, parsley, butter):

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits about as well
Carrotfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, pepper, parsley, 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.