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Mashed Potatoes

A dish of boiled potatoes mashed with milk or cream, salt, and optional butter, optionally browned in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes, removing any spots, and place them in cold salted water as you peel.

  2. Once all potatoes are peeled, transfer them to clean cold water and boil until soft, skimming the pot as needed.

  3. Drain the potatoes and mash them finely.

Mash and brown

  1. Add 1 cup of milk or thin cream and a little more salt, or a bit of butter if desired.

  2. Smooth the mashed potatoes in a dish.

  3. Place the dish in a 400°F (200°C) oven or near the fire to brown.

  4. Slice the cold mashed potatoes an inch thick.

  5. Brown the slices in the oven like toast.

  6. Serve with butter.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 main body of the dish, mashing into a soft, starchy base.
Milk or thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the mash smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, giving the mash richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mashing the potatoes finely. Potatoes must be boiled until fully soft and drained well, since excess water or lumps make the mash watery or stiff. Mashing while still hot helps the starch stay smooth when milk is added.

“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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