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Potato Pie Crust

A simple crust for potato pie made from boiled potatoes, cream, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Tea and potato work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 136 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Potato Pie Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them finely.

  2. Mix in the cream and salt to taste.

  3. Add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out.

  4. Handle the dough as little as possible.

Assemble the pie

  1. If using moist fruit, only cover the rim of the pie plate with the crust.

  2. Prick the upper crust to allow steam to escape.

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. Tea + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + potatotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,481 recipes

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

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Tea + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, giving the dough a tender, moist texture once mashed.
Rich sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the dough richer and more tender.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure so it can be rolled out.

The step that matters

Handle the dough as little as possible. Working flour into dough develops gluten, which makes the crust tough. Light handling keeps it tender and flaky.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, cream, 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.

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