Name: Potato Mould
Ingredients: potatoes; butter; milk; coarse sea salt; chopped parsley; bread crumbs or grated cheese; beetroot; lemon

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Mould

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mash the potatoes with butter and a little milk until smooth but not wet.
Season with coarse sea salt and decorate with chopped parsley.
Press the mixture into a greased mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
Before serving, dust with bread crumbs or grated cheese.
Garnish with beetroot and cut lemon.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + beetroottop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together745 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + beetroottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together330 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Swap the beetroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, milk, parsley, bread, lemon):

Asparagusfits better
Shallotfits better
Carrotfits better
Beetrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, parsley, bread, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.