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Potato Pie

A baked potato dish layered with onions, pepper, salt, butter, and topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Peel and slice the potatoes very thinly into a pie dish.

  2. Between each layer of potatoes, add a little onion, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add a little water and cut the butter into small pieces, placing them on top.

  4. Cover with puff pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. If desired, add the yolks of hard-boiled eggs and pour in mushroom ketchup through a funnel before serving.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the pie, becoming tender and starchy as they bake.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals in the filling while baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts over the layers.

The step that matters

Slicing the potatoes very thinly. Thin slices cook through within the long bake and settle into an even layer. Thick slices can stay firm in the centre while the pastry over them browns too quickly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, butter, egg, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, butter, egg, mushroom, ketchup. 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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