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Potatos Mashed

A simple dish of boiled potatoes mashed with butter, milk, and optionally egg yolk.

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 ↓

Potatos Mashed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Drain and dry the potatoes completely.

  3. Remove any blemishes from the potatoes.

  4. Pass the potatoes through a colander into a clean saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the butter and milk to the potatoes.

  2. Mix the potatoes well without making them too moist.

  3. If the potatoes are old or specked, shape them.

  4. If the potatoes are old or specked, brush them with egg yolk.

  5. If the potatoes are old or specked, lightly brown them over low heat.

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).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy base that cooks down into a soft, fluffy mash.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mash to a creamy consistency.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the surface brown when brushed on and heated.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the potatoes completely. Excess water left on boiled potatoes dilutes the mash and makes it gluey or loose. Drying lets the starch stay fluffy and lets the butter and milk blend in properly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg. 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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