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Scalloped Potatoes with Onions and Bacon

A baked dish of sliced potatoes, bacon, onion, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Scalloped Potatoes with Onions and Bacon

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.

Assemble

  1. Slice the potatoes and layer them in a baking dish, alternating with slices of bacon and a little onion, salt, and pepper. Continue layering until the dish is full.

Bake

  1. Fill the dish with boiling water and cook on the stove for 15 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, mix the cream and flour until smooth, then pour over the potatoes.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until thoroughly cooked and browned on top.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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).

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 tender as they cook through.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture to the sauce that coats the potatoes.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it becomes a smooth sauce rather than runny.
Breakfast bacon
Adds savory fat and flavor that seeps into the layers as they cook.

The step that matters

Mix the cream and flour until smooth. Lumps of flour stay dry and floury in the sauce. Whisking the flour into the cream fully before pouring lets it hydrate evenly and thicken into a uniform sauce.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, cream, 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.

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