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Dessert

Potato Pie

A baked pie with grated potatoes, lemon rind, water, egg, salt, and sugar in a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

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. Grate the potatoes and the rind of the lemon.

  2. Cut the pulp of the lemon and boil it in 1 pint of water.

  3. Strain the lemon water and add it to the grated potatoes.

  4. Mix in the beaten egg, a pinch of coarse sea salt, and sugar to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and cover with the second crust.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until 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. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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

Potatoes
Provide the starchy body that thickens and gives the filling its substance.
Egg
Binds the grated potato mixture so it holds together when baked.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet, starchy filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the acidity of the lemon.

The step that matters

Straining the lemon water. Grated potato releases starch and liquid quickly, so the filling can turn watery or gummy if the lemon water is not drained well before mixing. Thorough straining keeps the texture even.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

More potato pie recipes

Sweet 114Irish 16Crust 10Lemon 7Southern Sweet 5 See all 98 →

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