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Scalloped Potatoes

Scalloped potatoes are mashed potatoes baked in butter and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper, optionally topped with cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Scalloped 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

  1. Boil potatoes until soft, adding a little milk.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes.

  3. Beat in a little butter, using 2 teaspoons for every ½ cup of potatoes.

  4. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

Shape and bake

  1. Fill buttered patty pans or scallop shells with the mixture.

  2. Stamp a pattern on top of each.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. Glaze with butter while hot.

Serve

  1. Serve in the shells.

  2. Optionally sprinkle grated cheese on top before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the main bulk of the dish and, once mashed, give it a soft, fluffy body.
Milk
Adds moisture so the boiled potatoes mash into a smooth, spreadable mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the surface brown when glazed while hot.

The step that matters

Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness; too little heat leaves the top pale and wet, while overbaking can dry the edges. Watch the colour closely.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, pepper, cheese):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, pepper, cheese. 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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