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Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes are boiled potatoes mashed with butter and milk, seasoned with coarse sea salt.

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

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes thinly and soak them in cold water for 1 hour.

Cook

  1. Cover the potatoes with boiling water and boil quickly until done.

  2. Drain all the water and add a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Return the pot to the heat for 2-3 minutes.

Mash and serve

  1. Mash the potatoes with a potato masher or whip with a fork, adding butter and enough milk to create a soft paste.

  2. Serve in a smooth mound on a vegetable dish.

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 the mash its bulk and fluffy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mash becomes a soft, spreadable paste.

The step that matters

Returning the drained potatoes to the heat. Drying the potatoes over gentle heat evaporates surface water. Wet potatoes make a loose, gluey mash, so this brief drying step helps the mash hold together and taste concentrated.

“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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