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To Mash Potatoes

A simple mashed potato dish made by boiling, peeling, mashing, seasoning with salt, butter, milk, and optionally egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Mash Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Peel the potatoes and remove any specks or hard lumps.

Mash and season

  1. Mash the potatoes in a wooden bowl until fine.

  2. Sprinkle in a little coarse sea salt and mix in butter until smooth.

  3. If using milk, melt a little butter into it and ensure the potatoes are not too wet.

  4. For extra smoothness, pass the mixture through a sieve or colander.

  5. If desired, mix in a beaten egg with the milk.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starch that gives the mash its body and fluffy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, making the mash smooth and silky.
Milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the mash to a smooth consistency.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the mash when mixed in.

The step that matters

Keep the potatoes from getting too wet. Excess liquid makes mashed potatoes loose and gluey, so add milk gradually and only as much as the potatoes can absorb while staying fluffy.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, 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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