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Potato Au Gratin

A baked dish of boiled diced potatoes in a butter‑flour‑milk sauce topped with breadcrumbs and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour with butter until smooth.

  2. Stir this mixture into the boiling milk.

  3. Add the diced potatoes and cook for about 10 minutes.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer to a buttered baking dish.

  2. Cover with bread crumbs and then with grated cheese.

  3. Bake until golden and bubbly.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 absorb the creamy sauce as they cook.
Butter
Combines with flour to form a roux that thickens the milk and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that clings to the potatoes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the dish together.
Grated cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding flavor and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling milk. Adding the flour-butter mixture to hot liquid without lumps needs steady stirring, since flour clumps when it hits heat unevenly. Smooth mixing lets starch thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the potato

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

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

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