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Mashed Potato

A simple dish of boiled potatoes mashed with butter, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mashed Potato

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Drain the water and mash the potatoes using a potato masher.

  3. Add the milk, butter, and salt, then beat until well mixed and light.

  4. Optionally, use cream instead of milk and reduce the butter.

  5. When serving, do not smooth the 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

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, providing starch that gives mashed potatoes their body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mash becomes smooth and spreadable.

The step that matters

Beat until well mixed and light. Overworking mashed potatoes, especially with a mixer, releases too much starch and makes them gluey, so beat only until the liquid and fat are evenly incorporated and the texture is light.

“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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