Potato And Egg Pie With Bacon And Crème Fraîche

This was a big miss for us. My wife made it for a Mother's Day brunch for her mother today. She followed this recipe exactly, with the side exception of adding more salt. As we didn't have any creme fraiche around, she used sour cream, per the recipe.

What worked:
The pie crusts turned out great. She often struggles with pie crusts, but was really pleased with this. The pie looked delicious and the crust was really good.
Parts of this tasted pretty decent, especially the potatoes.

What didn't work:
This whole recipe just tasted kind of "off". Her mom said "I SHOULD love this. I love all of these things separately!" She thought the whole thing smelled and tasted like fish. I think it was the hard-boiled and then baked eggs. Though they were fresh and were cooked well, they started getting very eggy and sulfuric. My wife, her mom, and her sister didn't come close to finishing their pieces.
Also, the pie was incredibly dry and crying out for some sort of sauce.

Overall, this just wasn't great, particularly for the effort that went into it. I can't recommend this really at all. The only thing I could think to do would be to omit the eggs and add some Gruyere or something, but then it's an entirely different dish and would still be dry. We won't be making this again.

The introductory notes indicate that the "secret" to the pastry is the "turn given in Step 2". Couldn't find the turn in the directions.

Hello, It is me, Elizabeth, again. After writing the previous note about the inconsistency in the layering instructions in the text vs the video I decided to google again for the recipe. And, I found another from Food & Wine, that would appear to be the same dish, but after reading it I realize it is the one I used all those years ago. That recipe uses the same layer order as the video here. It also calls for 5 hard boiled eggs, and for creme fraiche or heavy cream -- not sour cream. I recall having used heavy cream all those years ago. At that time I did not know what creme fraiche was or where I could get it. This time I used sour cream because I had some in the house. But, it sort of curdled and did not really provide any liquid to the rest of the ingredients. So, it is my conclusion that this recipe, on this page, is not the original Andre Soltner recipe, which is probably the one that has been so popular. It might be a good thing to have the same recipe in both places that Food & Wine provides it. BTW, I googled Andre Soltner Potato Pie and that one came up. I tried to put the link to that version here, but it would not work. It was dated May 1996. And, one other inconsistency in this one, between text and video: In the video they show the dough being folded into thirds before refrigerating. There is nothing about that in the text here. However, it is part of the instructions in the original recipe from May 1996. Elizabeth