Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Crust

A dough made from mashed potatoes, salt, butter, milk or cream, and flour, used as a topping for meat pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. Add salt, cold butter, and milk or cream to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Mix in enough flour to create a dough that can be rolled out.

Use the dough

  1. Use the dough as a topping for meat pies.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 base that gives the dough its body and soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and rich in flavor.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture and richness so the dough comes together softly.
Flour
Gives enough structure to the dough so it can be rolled out.

The step that matters

Mixing in the flour. Adding too much flour makes the dough stiff and dense, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to roll. Mixing in small amounts until the dough just holds together gives a workable, tender crust.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Leekfits less well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, flour. 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 crust recipes

Mashed 3 See all 14 →

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes