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Dessert

Potato Custard Pie

A baked custard pie made with mashed potatoes, eggs, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes and beaten eggs.

  2. Add the warm milk, sugar, and butter to the mixture.

  3. Flavor with grated nutmeg and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the bottom pie crust.

  2. Bake until set, about 30-40 minutes.

  3. Serve hot or cold.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the potatoes and help the filling set into a sliceable custard when baked.
Mashed potatoes
Provide the body and bulk of the filling, giving it a thick, soft texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the custard so it bakes smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly at the edges.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs thicken as they heat, around 160°F to 180°F. Underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it grainy or cause it to weep and crack.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg. 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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