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Dessert

Potato Pie Crust

A crust made from mashed potatoes, flour, cornmeal, and boiling water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato Pie Crust

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes until done, then mash and sift them through a colander.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the Graham flour and white flour together in a bowl.

  2. Add the mashed potatoes to the flour, rubbing them in evenly.

  3. Pour boiling water over the corn meal and stir until wet.

  4. Add the corn meal mixture to the potato and flour mixture, mixing until just combined.

Roll and bake

  1. Dust a clean surface with dry flour and roll out the dough very thin.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

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

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry, mealy potatoes
Mashed starchy potatoes give the crust a tender, crumbly texture and moisture.
Graham flour
Adds a coarse, nutty texture and body to the dough.
White flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together when rolled.
Corn meal
Soaked in boiling water, it adds a grainy texture and helps bind the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin rolling keeps the crust crisp and lets it bake through evenly. Thick dough stays doughy in the middle and can turn out heavy.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, corn):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, corn. 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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