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Dessert

Silver Pie

A dessert pie made with potato, sugar, lemon, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Silver Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil or grate the potato in cold water.

  2. Add sugar, egg white, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Bake until set.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks, then add sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the top of the pie.

  3. Garnish with jelly.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potato
Its starch thickens the filling and gives it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Egg white
Adds structure to the filling and, when whipped, forms the stiff meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the pie and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped until they hold firm peaks to form a stable meringue. Underbeaten whites stay runny and may weep or slump on the pie.

Swap the potato

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

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

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