Name: Riced Potatoes
Ingredients: 8 hot boiled potatoes; 3 tablespoons butter; ½ teaspoon salt; ½ cup hot milk or cream; 1 can peas, drained and reheated

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 ↓

Riced Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Pass the hot boiled potatoes through a ricer.
Add the butter, salt, and hot milk or cream to the riced potatoes.
Skim off any fat from the meat.
Add the drained and reheated peas to the mixture.
Adjust seasoning if needed.
Pour the mixture over the mutton on the serving dish.

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).
Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,016 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Milk + peastop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,309 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).