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Potato Pie

A baked dish of mashed potatoes mixed with butter, sugar, eggs, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them very fine.

  2. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the mashed potatoes to the butter mixture while still warm, but not hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  2. Fold the beaten eggs into the potato mixture.

  3. Flavor with lemon juice and sprinkle a little grated nutmeg on top before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the starchy bulk that gives the pie its body once mashed fine.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture when creamed with sugar.
Eggs
Beaten and folded in to lighten the filling and help it set with structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the butter cream to a light, fluffy base.

The step that matters

Adding the mashed potatoes while warm, not hot. Potatoes that are too hot can cause the butter to melt and separate, while cold potatoes stiffen the creamed mixture and make it lumpy. Warm potatoes blend smoothly and keep the batter airy when the eggs are folded in.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, 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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