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Dessert

Chess Pie

A sweet pie with a custard-like filling made from sugar, flour, spices, butter, egg, water, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chess Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Mix sugar, flour, cinnamon, and cloves in a bowl.

  2. Add butter, egg (or yolks), and water; stir well.

  3. Boil the mixture while stirring continuously.

  4. Pour the filling into a baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form for the meringue.

  2. Spread meringue over the pie and brown in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, with the egg whites, helps form the meringue.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as it sets and add richness to the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich texture and mouthfeel in the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it sets into a sliceable custard.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a stable, airy meringue topping.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring continuously. Flour and egg thicken only when heated, and constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, cinnamon, clove, butter, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, cinnamon, clove, butter, egg. 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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