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Dessert

Potato Pie

A custard-like pie made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, mashed potatoes, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

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

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until very light, then mix in the milk and mashed potatoes.

  3. Add a little salt to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the pie crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set, similar to a custard pie.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set into a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they add lightness and help the filling rise and hold air.
Mashed potatoes
Give body and moisture, thickening the filling as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Provides liquid that sets with the eggs into a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Folding gently keeps that air in the mixture, so the pie stays light rather than deflating before it sets in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk. 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.

More potato pie recipes

Sweet 114Irish 16Crust 10Lemon 7Southern Sweet 5 See all 98 →

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