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Dessert

Potato Paste

A dough made from mashed potatoes, butter, egg, and flour, baked into a paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato dough

  1. Boil the potatoes until soft, then mash them.

  2. Pass the mashed potatoes through a colander while hot.

  3. Add the butter and egg to the hot potatoes and mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Flour a clean surface and your rolling pin generously.

  2. Roll out the potato mixture to the desired size.

  3. Quickly shape the paste and place it in the oven.

  4. Optionally, brush the top with beaten egg yolk before baking.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy base that gives the paste its body and soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth mouthfeel.
Egg
Binds the mashed potato so the paste holds its shape when rolled.
Flour
Keeps the dough from sticking to the surface and rolling pin during shaping.

The step that matters

Quickly shape the paste and place it in the oven. Potato dough stiffens and dries as it cools, becoming harder to shape and prone to cracking. Shaping and baking promptly keeps it pliable and helps it hold its form in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, flour. 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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