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Mashed Potatoes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until easily pierced with a fork, about 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the potatoes and shake them in the pot to expose all sides to air.

  3. Sprinkle with a little salt and cover with a cloth to evaporate moisture.

Mash and finish

  1. Mash the potatoes in the same pot over low heat.

  2. Heat the milk and butter together, then add slowly to the potatoes.

  3. Beat the potatoes with a fork or egg-beater until light and white.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starch and bulk that become the smooth, fluffy body of the mash.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel in the finished mash.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the mash to a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Drying the potatoes after draining. Shaking the potatoes in the pot and covering them lets surface moisture evaporate. Wet potatoes make the mash watery and gluey, so this drying helps it turn out light and fluffy.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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