Skip to main content
Main

Mashed Potatoes

A creamy potato dish made by mashing boiled potatoes with butter, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Steam the potatoes over boiling water until tender.

  3. Mash the potatoes in an earthen basin or bright tin pan.

Make the mash

  1. Season with coarse sea salt and add a generous piece of butter.

  2. Mix in 1 cup of rich milk until well combined.

  3. Transfer to a deep dish and smooth the top.

Brown or fry

  1. Optionally, add butter on top and place in a 400°F (200°C) oven to brown.

  2. Alternatively, score the top with steel bars for a golden brown finish.

  3. For a fried version, mold the mashed potatoes, immerse in hot lard, and fry until golden brown.

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
Cooked starch gives the mash its body and soft, fluffy structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, smooth mouthfeel and buttery flavor.
Rich milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the mash into a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Mix in the milk until just combined. Overworking cooked potato starch releases gluey starch and makes the mash heavy and dense, so stop mixing once the milk is evenly incorporated.

“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.

More mashed potatoes recipes

Baked 15Cheese 5Browned 4Garlic 4with Onions 4Baked Salmon Over 3 See all 312 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes