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Dessert

Potato Crust

A dough made from hot mashed potatoes, cream, flour, and optional baking powder, used as a crust for meat pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Crust

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine hot mashed potatoes and cream or milk.

  2. Beat the mixture until light using an egg beater.

  3. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

  4. If desired, mix in baking powder with the flour.

  5. Roll out the dough for use in meat pies.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Provide starch and body, so the dough holds together and rolls out smoothly.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the dough soft and tender.
Flour
Gives structure as the dough is worked, letting it firm up enough to roll.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the dough slightly, giving a less dense crust.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Too much flour at once makes the dough stiff and tough, while adding it slowly lets you stop when the dough is soft and easy to roll.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, flour):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour. 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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