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Mashed Potatoes

A simple mashed potato dish made with boiled potatoes, butter, milk, salt, pepper, and garnished with celery or parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the potatoes and soak them in water for at least 1 hour.

  2. Cut out any imperfections and soak old potatoes in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Place the potatoes in a pot with 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt and cover with water.

  4. Boil for 30 minutes or 45 minutes for large potatoes.

Mash and serve

  1. Drain the potatoes and transfer them to a wooden bowl.

  2. Mash the potatoes until fine using a potato masher.

  3. Melt butter into ½ cup of hot milk and mix it with the mashed potatoes until smooth.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a deep dish, smooth the top, and mark it with a knife.

  5. Season with pepper and garnish with a sprig of celery or parsley.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy base that becomes soft, fluffy and light when mashed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that loosens the mash and makes it creamy.

The step that matters

Mashing with hot liquid. Adding cold milk or butter to hot potatoes can make the mash gluey or uneven, so the milk is kept hot and melted butter is stirred in to keep the mash smooth and creamy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, butter, egg, pepper. 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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