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Mashed Potatoes

A simple dish of boiled potatoes mashed with butter, milk, and 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

Cook the potatoes

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until a fork can pierce the largest one.

  2. Drain the water, leaving the potatoes in the pot.

  3. Return the pot to the heat, sprinkle with coarse sea salt, and dry for 3 minutes.

Mash and serve

  1. Mash the potatoes with a fork until they are fluffy.

  2. Add a large spoonful of butter and 1 cup of milk, mixing lightly.

  3. Shape into a smooth mound in a serving 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
Starch that breaks down into a soft, fluffy body when mashed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture that loosens the mash and makes it creamy.

The step that matters

Drying the potatoes after draining. Returning the drained potatoes to the heat evaporates surface water. Wet potatoes turn gluey and dilute the butter and milk, so a short dry gives a fluffier mash.

“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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