What is it about white potato pie? Something about this odd-sounding idea really captivates people. It certainly got my attention many years ago when I was cooking my way through the Southern Heritage Pie & Pastry book. That pie started an obsession with lost ‘Maryland’ dishes. I’ve tried hundreds of Maryland recipes from the mundane to the bizarre and eventually given talks about my findings. After showing people slides of dozens of delicious dishes, and mentioning dozens more, come the questions and comments about the white potato pie: My grandmother used to make it. What IS it? Do you have a recipe? It sounds good! It sounds disgusting.
When you scratch the surface, white potato pie is not all that strange. Flour can be sweetened with sugar to make cake and no one bats an eye. Zucchini bread is fairly common. If you can accept tofu ice cream or rice pudding, why not white potatoes, sweetened and flavored with lemon and nutmeg? White potato pie filling hails from the same pudding tradition as sweet potato pie or pumpkin pie – and their British relative, carrot pudding. Somewhere along the lines, white potato pie got left in the dust.
Hannah Glasse’s white potato pudding recipes are some of the oldest recorded. In her 1774 book “The Art of Cookery,” she included three variations for ‘potatoe pudding’. Only the third explicity specified ‘white’ potatoes. That recipe remains nearly identical to modern ones – enriched with cream, butter, and eggs; flavored with nutmeg and wine; baked in a “puff paste.” She suggested decorating the pie with citron or orange peel.
Mary Randolph’s 1824 cookbook “The Virginia House-Wife” took the pie down a notch – it is included as a mere afterthought. Sweet potato pudding, she wrote, can be made by flavoring mashed sweet potatoes with nutmeg, lemon peel, and brandy, cooked in a pastry and decorated with citron. “Irish potato pudding is made in the same manner,” she noted, “but is not so good.”
Despite this not-so-ringing endorsement, white potato pie/pudding persisted. Recipes can be found in handwritten recipe manuscripts, famous Maryland cookbooks like “Queen of the Kitchen,” and community cookbooks spanning the 19th and 20th centuries.
The Cumberland News, 1969
When Ruth Gaskins included white potato pie in her 1968 cookbook “A Good Heart and A Light Hand”, it captured imaginations. Associated Press food editor Cecily Brownstone prominently featured the recipe in an article about soul food cookbooks. Newspapers across the country ran the article in July of 1969. “White Potato Pie: It’s Soul Food,” declared a headline in the Santa Cruz Sentinel. By August that year, a flurry of requests prompted Baltimore Evening Sun food columnist Virginia Roeder to publish several more recipes for white potato pie.
Ruth Gaskins was from Alexandria Virginia, which raises the question: what makes a White Potato Pie ‘Maryland’?
Regional newspapers all over the country had been printing recipes for white potato pie and it’s cousins, white potato “custard” and white potato “pudding,” since the late 1800s. The recipes do seem to have appeared in Maryland newspapers more frequently. Why?
One possibility is that the confusion with the Eastern Shore’s beloved White Hayman sweet potatoes is partially to blame. Another less tangible answer may simply be social networks – the ways that recipes have been shared and propagated through families, churches, and communities.
Although White Potato Pie is sometimes referred to as an Eastern Shore recipe, (as tends to happen – once for prestige, now for authenticity or nostalgia), it actually appeared in cookbooks and manuscripts all over the state.
The Boulden family of Cecil County stand out for doing a lot to increase white potato pie awareness. In 1881, Miss Laura D. Boulden won the “white potato custard pie” category(!) at a fair. In 1890 and 1892 the prize for that pie went to her sister in law, Mary Boulden. Mary, the wife of merchant C. M. Boulden, further spread the recipe by sharing it in the 1900 “Tested Maryland Recipes” and 1901 “Maryland Recipes Tried and True.” Her recipe is even copied into the recipe book of Katherine W. Stump (Magraw), a handwritten manuscript at the Maryland Historical Society. Kate Stump wrote below the recipe: “Mrs. C. M. Boulden.”
Bouldens aside, White Potato Pie got another big boost from All Hallows Church in Davidsonville. The church included a white potato pie in their annual Thanksgiving dinner, a cherished parish tradition that started around 1900. The church shared their recipe in the 1966 “Maryland’s Way” cookbook. As usual, interests were piqued and the recipe appeared in news stories about the cookbook. ‘Maryland-ness’ began to be burnished into the very idea of White Potato Pie.
It was probably Oxmoor House that sealed the deal. When they adapted recipes from “Maryland’s Way” into their “Southern Heritage Cookbook Library” series, they frequently added “Maryland” to the name. Thus, in 1983, white potato pie officially became “Maryland White Potato Pie,” in the cookbooks and in Oxmoor House’s Southern Living and Good Housekeeping magazines.
With all of this Maryland-y ceremony attached to White Potato Pie, I knew that if I was going to make it again and post about it, I couldn’t just make any recipe. I ought to try to do it some service, make something worthy of the hype.
I had to call for backup. Bramble Baking Company is run by one of my neighbors, Allie Smith. Of course, Baltimoreans like to support one another in general, but it’s not so hard when they happen to make a lot of beautiful and tantalizing pies and cakes. Allie’s baked goods are works of art that give sweet tooth cravings a dignified air.
We met to discuss what we could do for this humble pie. We started with some ideas to modernize and elevate the white potato pie. Toasted sugar? Browned Butter? Homemade condensed milk?
We came up with an ideal standard ratio for sweetness, liquids, eggs, etc. I did my best test kitchen-ing of pie fillings, trying out fillings made with various ratios of butter, cream, milk, and condensed milk. I tried different flavorings – lemon, brandy, cinnamon, nutmeg. I tried a recipe that had baking powder. At the suggestion of many old recipes, I forced the mashed potatoes through a sieve for smoothness.
After countless mini pies and annoying time spent with the strainer, it turned out that the browned butter was for naught. The toasty flavor gets lost in the pie. The baking powder made for a pleasant color but not much else.
The formula we settled on was most similar to the one provided by Theresa Young in “300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary’s County” (1975). A food processor made the process ridiculously simple and eliminated the need to waste time with the strainer. With a decadent sweetness and a lemon-forward flavor, the pie came out custardy and creamy, almost like a lemon cheesecake.
We took things back all the way to Hannah Glasse and decorated with citrus. Some lavender buds add a modern touch. In the absence of candied citrus or edible flowers, the top of the pie can be decorated with stenciled cinnamon to make it special.
I doubt this is the end of my white potato pie research. There’s still countless variations, and with each, memories and stories of recipe contests, community picnics and family gatherings. The fondness for this pie from those who’ve tasted it is in the transformation. It involves lots of sugar and any choice of flavorings. Most importantly, it involves the desire to share something sweet. Even in a state with as historic culinary abundance as Maryland, there has always been a need to turn something humble into something special.
Recipe:
- 2 large cooked, peeled russet potatoes
- 1 c sugar (Reduce to taste if desired)
- 1 can sweetened, condensed milk
- 4 eggs
- 2 lemons – juice of both, zest of one
- .25 tsp nutmeg or to taste
- 4 tablespoons melted butter
- 1.5 tsp salt (or ½ tsp if using salted butter)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
Combine potato and sugar in food processor or blender and process until smooth. Add eggs. Continue to process, adding remaining ingredients. Pour into cooked pie shell and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until top appears golden brown.
Recipe developed by Kara Mae Harris & The Bramble Baking Company
