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Dessert

Potato Pie

A baked pie of mashed potatoes mixed with sugar, butter, spices, lemon, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. 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 the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Peel the potatoes.

  3. Mash them through a colander.

Make the filling

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add the wine, brandy, ground mace, ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon rind to the creamed mixture.

  3. Beat the eggs until very light.

  4. Add the eggs gradually to the mixture, alternating with the mashed potatoes.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie dish.

  2. Bake without a top crust at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  4. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed potatoes form the body of the filling, giving it a soft, dense texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, creamed with butter, helps give it a light structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender, smooth texture.
Eggs
Beaten eggs set during baking, binding the mashed potato into a firm, sliceable custard-like filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Removing the pie too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking can make the filling dry and grainy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, sugar, butter, wine, brandy, cinnamon, nutmeg):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, sugar, butter, wine, brandy, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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