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Dessert

Silver Pie

A lemon-flavored potato pie topped with frothy egg whites and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Silver Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the grated potato, lemon juice, lemon rind, beaten egg white, sugar, and cold water.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

Top and finish

  1. Once baked, spread the frothed egg whites on top, sweetened and flavored with lemon.

  2. Return to the oven and brown the top.

  3. Before serving, add small pieces of jelly or jam on top.

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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

White potato
Its grated starch thickens the filling as it bakes, giving the pie body.
Lemon juice and rind
Provides the sharp acidity and bright aroma that define the lemon flavor.
Egg white
Helps bind the filling and sets during baking to give it structure.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Egg whites, frothed
Whipped foam forms the topping, which browns in the oven for a light, crisp finish.

The step that matters

Bake the filling until set. Underbaking leaves the grated potato and egg mixture runny, so the filling will not hold its shape when cut. Baking until set lets the proteins coagulate and the starch firm up.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, egg, sugar):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, egg, sugar. 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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