Name: Potatoes
Ingredients: 1 potato per pupil; butter or meat fat (for glazing); 1 beaten egg white (optional)

Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potatoes

Ingredients

1 potato per pupil
butter or meat fat (for glazing)
1 beaten egg white (optional)

Directions

Prepare

Bake a potato until tender.
Cut the skin in half lengthwise.
Mash the insides and season.
Return to the skin.

Vary and bake

Add beaten egg white to one half.
Bake again to notice the difference.
Cook one in the skin.
Cook another without the skin.
Cook one in the skin.

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.

Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,978 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potato: Provides the starchy flesh that becomes fluffy when baked and mashed.
Butter or meat fat: Adds richness and helps the glazed skin brown and taste savoury.
Egg white: Adds protein that sets when heated, giving the filling a firmer texture.