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Potato Paste

A dough made from mashed potatoes, butter, cream, salt, and flour, used for pies or dumplings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the hot mashed potatoes until light.

  2. Add the butter, cream, and salt, and beat again.

  3. Gradually add enough flour to make a soft dough.

  4. Handle the dough as lightly as possible and roll it out.

Use the dough

  1. Use the dough for meat or potato pies, or apple dumplings.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that form the base of the dough.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the dough softer and more tender.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and contributes to a tender texture.
Flour
Provides structure, binding the potato and fat into a workable dough.

The step that matters

Handle the dough as lightly as possible. Working the dough after flour is added develops gluten and gluey starch, which makes it tough. Light handling keeps the dough tender and flaky when rolled and baked.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, flour. 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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