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Potato Crust or Edging

Mashed potatoes mixed with butter, salt, and cream or milk, formed into a crust or edging around a dish and garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Crust or Edging

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them well.

  2. Add the butter, salt, and cream or milk, and stir until smooth.

Shape and garnish

  1. Form the mashed potatoes into a crust or edging around the dish.

  2. Place lumps of the potato mixture around the dish and garnish each with a sprig of parsley.

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 + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  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
Provide the bulk of the mixture, which mashes into a soft, moldable base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier texture.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture so the mash becomes smooth and easy to shape.

The step that matters

Mash the potatoes well until smooth. Thorough mashing breaks down the starch cells so the mixture blends evenly with the butter and liquid. Lumps left behind can make the mash uneven and harder to shape into a crust.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Celeryfits about as well

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