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To Mash Potatoes

A simple dish of boiled potatoes mashed with butter, salt, and milk.

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 ↓

To Mash Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes in a saucepan with a wooden spoon.

Finish and serve

  1. Add a good piece of butter, salt, and milk to the mashed potatoes. Beat the mixture well.

  2. Transfer the mashed potatoes into a mold.

  3. Turn out onto a vegetable dish or brown them before the fire.

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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming soft and fluffy when boiled and mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the mashed potatoes.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the mash, giving it a creamier texture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well. Beating after adding butter and milk works the starch released from the potatoes, so the mash turns smooth and creamy. Overworking it, especially with a blender or food processor, can make it gluey.

“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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