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Mashed Potatoes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil or steam the potatoes until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Drain the potatoes and let them dry.

  3. Peel the potatoes and remove any specks.

  4. While hot, pass the potatoes through a colander into a clean saucepan.

Mash and season

  1. Warm the potatoes and stir in the butter, milk, pepper, and salt. Avoid making the mixture too wet.

Shape and brown

  1. Optionally, place the mashed potatoes in buttered scallop shells or pudding molds.

  2. Brush the tops with egg yolk and brown in a Dutch oven.

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

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, and their starch gives the mash its body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother mouthfeel and flavor.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mash becomes soft and spreadable.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top, it helps the surface brown when baked.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture from getting too wet. Excess liquid makes mashed potatoes loose and watery, since the starch cannot hold extra moisture. Adding milk gradually and warming the potatoes first helps the mash stay thick and fluffy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, pepper, egg. 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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