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Potatoes

A creamy mashed potato dish made with butter, egg yolk, and cream or hot milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Select potatoes of the same size.

  2. Peel the potatoes and place them in cold water.

  3. Boil the potatoes slowly until tender, checking with a fork.

  4. Drain the water and add salt.

  5. Cover with a napkin to absorb steam and keep warm.

Mash and enrich

  1. Beat the boiled potatoes smooth with a potato masher.

  2. Mix in the yolk of an egg, cream or hot milk, and butter.

Warm and serve

  1. Place in a dish or scallop shells and warm in a saucepan, stirring constantly.

  2. Brown the surface with a salamander if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that mashes into the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier texture.
Cream or hot milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mash to a soft, spoonable texture.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the mash into a smooth, cohesive texture.

The step that matters

Boil the potatoes slowly until tender. Slow boiling cooks the potatoes evenly through without breaking their outer layers apart, so they mash smooth rather than watery or gummy. Overworking the cooked potatoes releases more starch and can make them sticky.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, 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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