Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Potatoes

Creamed potatoes are baked potatoes coated in a butter and flour cream sauce and topped with buttered crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Creamed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Make a cream sauce by melting butter in a saucepan, then whisk in flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually add cream (or milk) while stirring until thickened.

Combine and bake

  1. Combine the cream sauce with the cut potatoes, using half as much sauce as potatoes.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and top with buttered crumbs.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, giving it body and soft texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, thickening into a smooth sauce that coats the potatoes.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the sauce and helps the crumb topping brown.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a stable sauce that holds the potatoes together.

The step that matters

Make the cream sauce smooth. Whisking flour into melted butter before adding liquid prevents lumps, and adding cream gradually while stirring lets starch gelatinize evenly into a smooth, thickened sauce.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes