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Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes made with boiled potatoes, milk, butter, and salt.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and boil the potatoes as for plain boiled potatoes.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiling milk and butter to the mashed potatoes.

  2. If needed, add more salt to taste.

  3. Dish the mashed potatoes immediately, heaping them in an oval form and smoothing the top.

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 + 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 mashes into the dish's body and fluffy texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the mash and softening its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk and butter. Hot liquid is absorbed more evenly into warm, mashed starch, giving a smooth texture. Cold milk cools the potatoes and can make the mash gluey or stiff.

“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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