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Dessert

Lemon and Potato Pie

A sweet potato pie flavored with lemon, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Lemon and 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 filling

  1. Boil the sweet potatoes until tender, then mash them through a sifter.

  2. Combine the mashed sweet potatoes, milk, butter, sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and beaten egg yolks in a bowl. Mix the combined ingredients well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a puff pastry crust.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Bake the pie at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Spread the whipped egg whites over the baked pie.

  3. Return the pie to the oven. Bake until the meringue is golden brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together314 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sweet potato + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together596 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk and body of the filling once mashed smooth.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set during baking, giving it a custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that forms a light meringue topping which browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue brown when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet filling and balances its sweetness.

The step that matters

Baking the filling until set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overbaking can make the custard curdle or weep and leave the filling grainy, so check for a set centre rather than relying only on time.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatothe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

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