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Scalloped Potatoes I

Scalloped potatoes are layered potatoes baked with butter, flour, milk, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 I

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash, peel, rinse the potatoes, then cut them into ½-inch slices.

Assemble

  1. Butter a baking dish and add a layer of potatoes.

  2. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper, dredge with flour, and dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Repeat layering until the dish is full.

  4. Pour in hot milk until it is visible through the top layer.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour, or until the potatoes are soft. You may need to add more milk.

  2. Cover the dish during the first half of cooking if necessary.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 and become soft and tender as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the top brown.
Flour
Dredged over the layers to thicken the milk into a creamy sauce.
Hot milk
Cooks the potatoes in liquid and forms the creamy sauce as starch thickens it.

The step that matters

Pour in hot milk until it is visible through the top layer. Enough liquid is needed so the potatoes cook through and the flour can thicken into a sauce. Starting with hot milk shortens the time the dish spends heating up in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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