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Dessert

Potato Custard Pie

A baked pie made with mashed potatoes, butter, eggs, sweet milk, sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potato Custard 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the custard

  1. In a large bowl, combine the mashed and strained potatoes with the butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, sweet milk, and sugar to the mixture.

  3. Flavor with nutmeg and cinnamon to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide body and a smooth, thick base for the custard filling.
Eggs
Set the custard as they cook, giving it structure and a tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth, tender filling.
Sweet milk
Provides liquid that cooks into the custard and adds creaminess.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly at the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the custard runny while overbaking can make it grainy or cracked. Bake until the centre is just firm.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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