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If one object, let’s say a potato, takes half an hour in the oven. Will four potatoes take two hours?
No. Unless you cook them sequentially.
Nope takes longer to heat/cook more tattles 🙂
Yes, put 20 potatoes in then pop out for the day, they will be nicely done in 10 hours time
If you cut the 4 potatoes into 4 pieces each they will take 7 and a half minutes.
What kind of potato? Don’t mix different types together. Won’t end well
it probably will take longer to cook 4 potatos than one, as the 4 are probably causing airflow (assuming fan oven) to be disrupted, and less heat getting to the other tatties. If you do them in a microwave, this effect is amplified (as the microwave has no feedback circuit to detect the heating waves are being absorbed more). It almost certainly won't take 4 times as long
Does it make a difference if the oven is on a conveyor belt?
Are we assuming identically proportioned potatoes of the same variety?
If one object, let’s say a potato, takes half an hour in the oven. Will four potatoes take two hours?
Are the potatoes in question having a poo or having a party?
All objects exactly the same. The potato is just hypothetical. Is there perhaps a rule, or formula?
Standard oven.
Gas or electric oven?
Electric.
"What sort of potato is that?"
"I think you'll find that is an hypothetical potato."
Can we assume it's a spherical potato?
No you cannot.
Conventional oven - No
Microwave - Yes(ish)
What altitude is the oven at? Cooking takes longer at higher altitude, not sure if this would in turn impact the additional proportion of time for 4 object over 1.
How big are the potatoes? Little new potatoes, or giant baking ones?
To the OP - no.
In a conventional oven, the air gets hot, and this heat is conducted into the potato. It conducts into the middle of the potato slowly, which is why your potato takes ages to cook. The only thing that matters* is the air temperature and the size of the potatoes, assuming a standard potatoey shape. A potato double the size would take longer to cook (but not twice as long, because the half of the potato on the outside of the original potato has a larger surface area), but two potatoes the same size will not because the outside of each potato (the bit in contact with the hot air ) is the same size.
If you wanted to cook the same mass of potato, you'd be better off with more smaller potatoes because small potatoes take less time to cook and the number of potatoes doesn't matter. You could also look at it from the point of view of surface area - more smaller potatoes have more surface are in contact with hot air for the same mass of potato flesh that needs heating, and the middle of each potato is closer to the heat so it'll take less time.
Different story in a microwave though. The oven is filled with microwave radiation, which gets absorbed by the food. There's only so much radiation so if you have two potatoes it gets spread across both of them and they heat less quickly.
* and the power of your oven, in theory (but not in practice). If your oven was low power and really well insulated, then enough cold potatoes could in theory make the oven colder if the element wasn't powerful enough to put enough heat in. But ovens are always powerful enough for this I think.
More cold things in oven = bigger temperature gradients inside oven = bigger temperature difference between thermostat location and outside of spuds = more spuds experience a lower temperature and cook slower.
Conventional oven – No
Microwave – Yes(ish)
Thank god there's someone with a brain on this forum.
Microwave is 50% increase in time for 100% increase in mass. So if one potato took ten minutes, two would take 15.
Conventional oven I'd be astonished if the difference was anything other than negligible unless you'd stuffed it sufficiently to hamper convection currents. You cook things like chickens at [time] per pound as it takes longer to cook through something bigger.
Is the oven on a conveyer belt?
What about those big groups of Penguins that form a massive circular huddle and swap places to mainatin overall heat?
I propose, new potaoes on a waltzer type device to rotate them within the oven.
Fascinating.
Is the oven on a conveyer belt?
Like on The Generation Game? No, it's just like, under the hob.
No you cannot.
Harsh 🙁
Cooking takes longer at higher altitude
that’s mostly because it takes longer to get up the stairs with your shopping.
Four potatoes, eh? I see.
I always just do what it says on the packet.
Just go round to the local chippy, buy a bag of chips, then assemble them into full potato sized lumps.
Parallel not series
Are the potatos all Boost? Dont want to mix types there.
Are they all 29er? No one want a mullet spud.
Never mind the potato, one of life great mysteries is why do oven chips say 40 minutes on the bag but then take between 8 and 10 weeks to get crispy?