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Dessert

Potato Cream Pie

A sweet pie made with mashed potatoes, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and brandy or wine, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Bake good mealy potatoes and mash them through a sieve.

  2. Mix the warm mashed potatoes with butter, then add sugar, milk, and flavoring.

  3. Separate the eggs; beat yolks and whites until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Stir the beaten eggs into the mixture just before baking.

  2. Bake in pie crusts and sift powdered sugar over when done.

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

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 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. Sugar + buttertop 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

Mashed potatoes
Provide the body and bulk that give the pie its creamy, custard-like filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the filling and add structure and lift.
Milk and brandy or wine
Add moisture and liquid to loosen the filling, with the spirit adding aroma.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten eggs in just before baking. Eggs set when heated, so adding them late keeps the mixture from thickening or curdling early and lets them bind evenly as the pie bakes.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, 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 sugar, butter, 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.

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