Skip to main content
Main

Mashed Potato

A simple dish of boiled potatoes mashed with milk or cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mashed Potato

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes until smooth and no lumps remain.

Finish and serve

  1. Add milk or cream and butter, then beat thoroughly with a fork.

  2. Reheat the mixture and serve in a 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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 mashes into a smooth, soft texture.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the mash and softening its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a silkier, smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Mash the potatoes until smooth and no lumps remain. Lumps form when starch is unevenly broken down and moisture is uneven. Mashing while the potatoes are hot and thoroughly cooked helps the starch break apart evenly, giving a smooth texture. Overworking cooled potatoes can make them gluey.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Peanutfits better
  2. Cocoafits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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

More mashed potato recipes

Beef and Casserole 7Meat and Casserole 6Cakes 4Crust 3 See all 6 →

You might also like

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