Skip to main content
Main

Potatoes

A simple potato dish that can be baked, mashed with butter and salt, boiled, or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Directions

Bake

  1. Bake the potatoes until tender.

  2. Serve immediately or let one sit until soggy.

Prepare and refill

  1. Cut a baked potato in half lengthwise.

  2. Remove the insides.

  3. Mash the insides with butter and salt.

  4. Return the mixture to the skin.

  5. Add beaten egg white to one half and bake again.

Compare cooking methods

  1. Boil one potato with skin and another without skin for comparison.

  2. Steam one potato with skin and another without skin for comparison.

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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
Its starch swells and sets as it cooks, giving the flesh a fluffy, dry texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the mashed flesh for a smoother, moister texture.
Egg white
Its proteins set when baked, firming the filling in the half it is added to.

The step that matters

Bake the potatoes until tender.. The potato's starch must fully swell and soften throughout. If the centre stays underdone, the flesh turns dense and grainy instead of fluffy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg. 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.

More baked potato recipes

Skins 8Casserole 7Halves 7Pudding 7Balls 6 See all 14 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes