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Dessert

Potato Pie

A baked pie made with mashed potatoes, butter, eggs, sugar, wine, nutmeg, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon 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

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. Boil the potatoes until tender, then peel and mash them.

  2. Let the mashed potatoes cool nearly to room temperature.

  3. In a bowl, cream the butter and add the cooled potatoes.

  4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  5. Stir in sugar, wine, grated nutmeg, lemon juice, and lemon peel.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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 + lemontop 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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

White potatoes
Provide the bulk of the filling and a soft, smooth body when mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that makes the filling tender and smooth.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set it into a sliceable custard-like texture when baked.
Lemon peel and juice
Add bright acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the eggs one at a time. Beating each egg in fully before the next keeps the butter and potato mixture emulsified and smooth. Adding eggs too fast can make the batter look curdled and bake unevenly.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

More potato pie recipes

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

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