Skip to main content
Main

Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes made by boiling, mashing, and mixing with butter, milk or cream, then served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Pour off the water.

  3. Steam the potatoes dry.

  4. Peel the potatoes and remove any specks.

  5. Press the potatoes through a colander or mash them with a wooden fork until smooth.

Make the mash

  1. Melt the butter with the milk or cream in a clean saucepan.

  2. Add the potatoes to the saucepan.

  3. Sprinkle with salt.

  4. Stir over low heat until well mixed and hot.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

  2. Mold into a shape and brown under the broiler.

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
Provide the starchy bulk that becomes the soft, fluffy body of the mash.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture so the mash loosens and spreads smoothly.

The step that matters

Steam the potatoes dry. Excess water left on boiled potatoes dilutes the mash and makes it watery and loose. Drying them lets the starch hold together and gives a thicker, fluffier texture.

“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.

More mashed potatoes recipes

Baked 15Cheese 5Browned 4Garlic 4with Onions 4Baked Salmon Over 3 See all 312 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes