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Irish Potato Pie

A baked potato pie with butter, cream, milk, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, brandy, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Irish 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. Boil and beat the potatoes until smooth.

  2. Mix in the butter, cream, sweet milk, egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, and brandy until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Top and finish

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and bake until golden.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body that makes the filling thick and smooth.
Egg yolks
Set the filling when baked and add richness and color.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the golden meringue topping.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving a softer, silkier custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue become stable and glossy.

The step that matters

Beat the meringue to stiff peaks before spreading. Sugar added gradually to whipped egg whites stabilizes the foam. If the whites are under-whipped or sugar is added too fast, the meringue can weep or collapse in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

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