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Plain Mashed Potatoes

A simple mashed potato dish made with potatoes, butter, cream or milk, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Plain Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Pare the potatoes.

  2. Soak the potatoes in cold water for 1 hour.

Cook and mash

  1. Boil the potatoes in salted water until done, then drain well.

  2. Mash the potatoes with a potato masher.

Finish the mash

  1. Melt the butter.

  2. Heat the milk.

  3. Add the melted butter and heated milk to the potatoes.

  4. Add salt to taste and beat until light.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 mashed potatoes their body and fluffy texture once cooked and mashed.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the mash into a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Drain the potatoes well before mashing. Excess water left on cooked potatoes dilutes the mash and makes it watery, so the added butter and milk cannot be absorbed properly.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream. 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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