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.
