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Dessert

Potato Pie Crust

A crust made from mashed potatoes, cream, salt, and flour, rolled and baked for potato pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Finish the pie

  1. For moist fruit pies, only cover the rim of the pie plate with the crust.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed potato gives the dough body, moisture and a tender, soft texture.
Rich sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the crust richer and more tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough hold together and be rolled out.

The step that matters

Handle the dough as little as possible. Mixing and kneading develop gluten in flour, and overworking makes the crust tough and dense rather than tender. Light handling keeps it flaky and tender.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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