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Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes are boiled potatoes mixed with salt, butter, and milk until smooth.

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

  1. Pare and boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes until fine and light.

  3. Add salt and butter, then beat well.

  4. Gradually add boiling milk and beat until smooth.

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
Provide the starchy base that becomes fluffy when mashed and forms the bulk of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the starch for a smoother, silkier texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mash, and its warmth keeps the potatoes smooth as they are beaten.

The step that matters

Gradually add boiling milk and beat until smooth. Adding the liquid in portions lets it blend evenly with the starch. Cold or excess liquid added at once can make the mash gluey or runny, and overbeating released starch also turns it gummy.

“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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