Skip to main content
Main

Potatoes Au Gratin

A baked potato dish topped with cheese, breadcrumbs, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potatoes Au Gratin

Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Potatoes Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Hash the cold boiled potatoes.

  2. Put them on the stove with a little milk and butter.

  3. Boil for five minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper to make them creamy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer to a baking dish.

  2. Mix the grated cheese and bread crumbs together, then sprinkle over the potatoes.

  3. Drizzle melted butter on top.

  4. Bake until brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 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

Cold boiled potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and, once heated with milk and butter, become creamy.
Grated cheese
Melts into the topping and browns in the oven, adding richness and flavour.
Dry bread crumbs
Crisp and brown on top, giving a contrasting crunchy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the potatoes turn creamy and the topping brown.
Milk
Moistens the potatoes so they cook into a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Boil the potatoes with milk and butter until creamy. Hashed potatoes need enough liquid and fat, plus gentle heat, to release starch and bind into a smooth, creamy mass rather than a dry, crumbly one.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes