Name: Mince, Served with Mashed Potatoes
Ingredients: 1 lb Australian mince meat; 1½ lb potatoes; 1 oz butter; 1 tbsp milk; 1 tbsp mushroom ketchup; 1 tsp coarse sea salt; pepper to taste

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 ↓

Mince, Served with Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Wash and scrub the potatoes thoroughly.
Peel the potatoes and remove any eyes or black spots.
Place the potatoes in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Add 1 teaspoon of salt.
Boil the potatoes for 20 to 30 minutes until tender.
Check tenderness with a fork.
Drain the potatoes and let them steam with the lid half on.
In a small saucepan, heat 1 ounce of butter and 1 tablespoon of milk until boiling.
Mash the potatoes until smooth, preferably through a wire sieve.
Pour the boiling milk into the mashed potatoes and stir until smooth.
Season with pepper and salt to taste.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together968 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, milk, mushroom, ketchup, pepper):

Capsicumfits better
Potatothe original
Shallotfits about as well
Tomatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, milk, mushroom, ketchup, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.