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Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes are boiled potatoes mashed with butter, milk or cream, and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

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

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes quickly and remove any specks.

  2. While still hot, press the potatoes through a colander or mash them with a strong wooden fork or spoon until smooth.

Make the mash

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan with the milk or cream.

  2. Add the potatoes and sprinkle with salt, stirring over gentle heat until well mixed and hot.

Serve and brown

  1. Serve directly.

  2. Heap in a dish and brown under the fire.

  3. Mold in a buttered dish with breadcrumbs and brown in the 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 + 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 body that mashes into the soft base of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the mash a smooth, velvety mouthfeel.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the mash to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Mash the potatoes while still hot. Warm potatoes break down smoothly and absorb butter and milk evenly. Once they cool, starch sets and the mash turns gluey or lumpy.

“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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