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Mashed Potatoes

A simple dish of boiled potatoes mashed with butter and milk or cream.

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 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.

  2. Soak them in cold water for 5 to 50 minutes, depending on their age.

  3. Boil the potatoes in cold water with a pinch of salt until tender.

  4. Drain the potatoes thoroughly.

Mash and season

  1. Add another pinch of salt.

  2. Mash the potatoes in the pot until smooth using a potato masher.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of butter.

  4. Add enough milk or cream to moisten.

  5. Beat the mixture with a large spoon until foamy.

Shape and brown

  1. Optionally, form the mashed potatoes into a mound on a plate.

  2. Butter the surface.

  3. Brown slightly in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

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
Provide the starch that gives mashed potatoes their body and fluffy structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the starch for a smoother, more flavorful mash.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture so the mash becomes smooth and spreadable rather than stiff.

The step that matters

Drain the potatoes thoroughly. Excess water left on the cooked potatoes dilutes the mash and makes it loose and watery. Removing it lets the starch stay thick and creamy when mashed with butter and milk.

“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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