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Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes made with butter, salt, and cream or milk, optionally chilled and fried with butter, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes and mix in butter, coarse sea salt, and cream or milk.

  3. If there are leftovers, press them into a dish and refrigerate overnight.

Fry and serve

  1. The next morning, cut the chilled potatoes into slices.

  2. Fry the slices in butter until brown, seasoning with pepper and chopped 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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  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, providing starch that gives mashed and fried textures.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns during frying for flavour.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed potatoes.

The step that matters

Refrigerate the leftover mash overnight. Chilling lets the starch in the potatoes set, so the slices hold their shape when fried instead of falling apart.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, pepper, parsley):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, parsley. 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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