Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓
Potato 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
Boil the sweet milk in a saucepan.
Stir in the grated raw potato and let it cool.
Once cool, add the beaten eggs, sugar, salt, butter, and flavoring.
Bake
Pour the mixture into a pie dish and bake without an upper crust at 350°F (175°C) until set.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Potato + milktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Eggs
- Set the filling into a sliceable custard as they bake.
- Grated raw potato
- Adds body and starch that thickens the filling and gives it texture.
- Sweet milk
- Provides the liquid base and moisture for a soft, tender custard.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the top brown lightly during baking.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Let the potato mixture cool before adding the beaten eggs. Eggs scramble and curdle when added to very hot liquid. Cooling the milk and potato first lets the eggs blend in smoothly and set evenly into a uniform custard in the oven.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, butter):
- Potatothe original
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Asparagusfits about as well
- Capsicumfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter. 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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