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Dessert

Irish Potato Pie

A sweet potato pie made with boiled potatoes, eggs, sugar, allspice, butter, brandy, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Irish Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mash the potatoes with the cream and butter.

  2. Add the sugar, egg yolks, brandy, and allspice to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pastry shell.

Bake and serve

  1. Make a meringue with the egg whites and spread it on top of the pie.

  2. Bake for a few minutes until the meringue is 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  4. Potato + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body that holds the filling together.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the filling; whites whip into the meringue topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meringue brown when baked.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the mashed potato filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, silkier texture.

The step that matters

Baking the meringue. Meringue made from whites and sugar can weep or brown unevenly if underbaked or overbaked. Watch for a golden surface, since sugar browns quickly in the oven's heat and the meringue sets as its proteins firm.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

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