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Moulded Potato

A baked dish of mashed potatoes shaped into small cups and glazed with butter.

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 ↓

Moulded Potato

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mash the potatoes lightly with a fork.

  2. Mix in the butter and milk until combined, but do not make it too soft.

  3. Wet small cups with cold water and fill them with the potato mixture, packing it down firmly.

  4. Turn the molded potatoes out onto a greased baking pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until they are brown and have a russet hue, glazing with butter as they color.

  2. Transfer to a flat, hot 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. 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

Mashed potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and hold the molded shape when packed.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown when glazed.
Milk
Adds moisture so the potato mixture packs smoothly without becoming gluey.

The step that matters

Mixing the potato without making it too soft. Too much liquid or overworking makes the potato mixture slack, so it will not hold its shape when packed into cups and turned out.

“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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