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Duchess Potatoes

A dish of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, salt, and egg yolks, shaped into a border for fish or sweetbreads.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Duchess Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato mixture

  1. Mix the potatoes, butter, salt, and egg yolks together.

  2. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

Pipe and serve

  1. Put the mixture through a pastry tube.

  2. Use as a border for fish or creamed sweetbreads.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Riced potatoes
Provide the main body and starch that hold the piped shape.
Butter
Adds richness and softens the texture for a smooth mixture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture thoroughly. Thorough beating evenly combines the fat, yolks and hot potato into a smooth, cohesive mixture. Under-beaten mash can be lumpy and may not pipe cleanly or hold its shape.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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