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Riced Potatoes

A dish of mashed potatoes riced and seasoned with salt, pepper, milk, butter, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Riced Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the potatoes until fine using a wooden masher.

  2. For each pint of potatoes, add ½ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, pepper, hot milk to moisten, and enough butter for flavor.

  3. Stir and beat with a wire masher until light and creamy white.

  4. If available, use cream instead of milk and butter.

  5. Press the mashed potatoes through a potato ricer into the 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  5. 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
Form the bulk of the dish, and mashing them breaks down starch to create a smooth base.
Hot milk
Moistens the mashed potatoes and loosens their texture for a creamy result.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavor, and helps give the potatoes a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Beating the potatoes until light and creamy. Overworking potatoes can release too much starch, making them gluey. Beat just until light and smooth, and add the hot liquid gradually so the texture stays fluffy rather than dense.

“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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