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Dessert

Cottage Cheese Pie

A baked pie made with cottage cheese, eggs, lemon, raisins or cream, coconut, butter, and honey or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cottage cheese and butter work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Cottage Cheese Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Press the cottage cheese through a ricer.

  2. Add the remaining ingredients and mix thoroughly.

  3. Turn the mixture into a pie pan lined with pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake at 450°F (230°C) until the mixture thickens slightly.

  2. Lower the heat to 325°F (160°C) and bake until firm.

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. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Coconut + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Coconut + honeytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Lemon + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Forms the body of the filling and sets into a firm, creamy custard as it bakes.
Eggs
Set the filling through heat, giving it structure and holding it together when sliced.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture and smooth mouthfeel.
Honey, syrup, or sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly at the surface.
Moist coconut
Adds moisture and a chewy texture, along with coconut flavour.

The step that matters

Baking at two temperatures. The high first bake starts the filling thickening, then the lower heat sets it gently. Baking too hot throughout can make the egg-based filling curdle, puff, or crack, while stopping too early leaves it loose in the centre.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, egg, lemon, coconut, butter, honey):

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, egg, lemon, coconut, butter, honey. 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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