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Dessert

Silver Pie

A sweet potato and lemon pie with a frothy rose water topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and currant work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 494 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Silver Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the potato into a deep plate.

  2. Add lemon juice, lemon rind, beaten egg white, sugar, and cold water to the potato.

Bake and top

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

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites, powdered sugar, and rose water until well combined.

  3. Spread the egg white mixture evenly on top of the pie and return to the oven to stiffen for a few moments.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, garnished with a spoonful of currant jelly on each piece if desired.

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. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Lemon + rosetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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

White potato
Grated potato forms the body of the filling, giving it a thick, soft texture as it bakes.
Lemon
Juice and rind add acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Egg white
Beaten whites set into the filling and form the light, stiff meringue topping.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a smooth, set texture.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the beaten whites to sweeten and stabilize the topping.

The step that matters

Return the topped pie to the oven briefly. Meringue topping needs only a short time to stiffen; overbaking can make it weep, shrink, or turn tough and brown. Watch it closely so the top sets without losing its softness.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, lemon, egg, sugar, rose):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

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