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Dessert

Irish Potato Pie

A sweet potato pie made with mashed potatoes, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon, nutmeg, and mace, baked in pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form and set aside.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the mashed potato with the lemon juice, nutmeg, and mace.

  2. Add the egg yolks to the potato mixture and combine well.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites last.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into pie crusts and bake until set.

  2. Serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potato
Provides the bulk and body of the filling, giving it a soft, dense texture.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to add richness and a tender, fine-textured structure.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the filling, while whites are folded in to lighten it and help it set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Beaten whites trap air that gives the filling lightness. Overmixing or stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a denser pie after baking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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