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Dessert

Cream Cheese Pie

A sweet cheese pie made with Waukesha cheese, eggs, sugar, lemon, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream Cheese Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the Waukesha cheese.

  2. In a bowl, beat the yolks of the eggs with the sugar until light.

  3. Combine the cheese mixture with the egg yolks and beat until very light.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

  5. Add the lemon juice and grated rind, mixing gently.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a small pie tin with pie crust.

  2. Pour the mixture into the crust.

  3. Lay strips of pastry across the top.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cheese + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cheese + lemontop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Waukesha cheese
Forms the thick, creamy body of the filling.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and help set the filling; whipped whites add lift and airiness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the yolks whip to a light texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Pie crust
Holds the filling and forms the base and top of the pie.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Overmixing deflates them, which makes the filling dense instead of light after baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, sugar. 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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