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Best Mashed Potatoes

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

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

Best Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes

  1. Boil unpeeled potatoes in salted water for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the water immediately after cooking.

Mash and serve

  1. Peel the boiled potatoes and mash them until very light.

  2. Add salt, butter or oleomargarine, and hot milk, mixing well.

  3. If not serving immediately, pile lightly in a pan and set in the oven to 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. Milk + buttertop 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 the fluffy, light body of the mash.
Hot milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, and hot liquid keeps the mash smooth and loose.
Butter or oleomargarine
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mashing the potatoes until very light. Overworking warm potato starch releases excess starch and makes the mash gummy and sticky. Mash gently and add the liquid and fat while the potatoes are hot so they absorb them evenly without becoming 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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