Skip to main content
Bread

Potato Crust

A pastry crust made from butter, flour, mashed potatoes, egg yolks, and seasonings, used for pies, puffs, or sausage rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Rub in the fat

  1. Work the butter or dripping into the flour until stiff enough to roll out on a floured board.

  2. Let it cool before rolling.

  3. Rub the fat into the flour.

Mix the crust

  1. In a bowl, mash the potatoes.

  2. Add the mashed potatoes until the right consistency is reached.

  3. Add the egg yolks and dissolved butter, and beat thoroughly.

  4. Sift in the flour.

  5. Let the mixture sit for several hours.

  6. Season with salt, white pepper, and cayenne.

  7. Add herbs or lemon rind if desired.

Finish and cook

  1. When ready to bake, brush the crust with egg whites if making pie or puffs.

  2. For small sausage rolls, roll the crust thinly around previously cooked filling.

  3. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the crust once mixed with fat and liquid.
Butter or dripping
Coats the flour particles to give a short, tender texture.
Potatoes
Add moisture and softness, helping the dough roll out pliably.
Egg yolks
Bind the dough and add richness and colour.

The step that matters

Let it cool before rolling. Fat that is still warm softens the dough and makes it sticky. Cooling firms the fat again, so the dough holds its shape and rolls out cleanly without tearing.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, potato, egg, white pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, potato, egg, white pepper. 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

Potato BreadPotato Bread124 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipes