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To Mash Potatoes

A simple mashed potato dish made by boiling, mashing, and seasoning with 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 ↓

To Mash Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Peel the potatoes and break them into a paste.

Finish and serve

  1. Add milk, salt, and butter, then stir over low heat until well combined.

  2. Serve as is or shape into a form and brown the top under a broiler.

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 starch and body that make up the mash.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness so the mash becomes smooth and spreadable.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until well combined. Overworking starchy potatoes after they are mashed can release more starch and make the texture gluey. Gentle heat and stirring just until combined keeps it fluffy while the butter and milk blend in.

“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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