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Dessert

Potato Pie

A sweet pie made with boiled potatoes, spices, marrow, dates, candied peel, nuts, and egg yolks, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a pie dish with the crust.

  3. Spread the butter over the crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Layer the boiled potatoes, whole spices, marrow, dates, egg yolks, almonds, pistachios, and candied peels in the dish.

  2. Cover with another layer of crust and seal the edges.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with wine, butter, and sugar.

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. Almond + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + nutstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Dates + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the soft, starchy bulk of the filling and hold the other layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the crust brown and taste savoury.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling so it sets rather than runs.
Dates
Add concentrated sweetness and a soft, sticky texture to the filling.
Almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavour that contrasts with the soft filling.
Candied peels
Add sweetness, chewy texture and bright citrus aroma.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The crust is sealed over a moist, starchy filling, so it can look done before the centre is heated through. Baking until golden, at the stated oven temperature, gives the crust structure and lets the filling set and warm evenly.

Swap the dates

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, potato, egg, almond, pistachio, nuts, orange):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, potato, egg, almond, pistachio, nuts, orange. 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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Sweet 114Irish 16Crust 10Lemon 7Southern Sweet 5 See all 98 →

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