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Dessert

Cheese Pie

A baked pie filled with cottage cheese, eggs, butter, sugar, vanilla, and flour, topped with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a springform pan with pie crust.

Make the filling

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the vanilla and flour.

  4. Pass the cottage cheese through a fine sieve and moisten with cream.

  5. Combine all ingredients and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into the crust and sprinkle with cinnamon.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cottage cheese
Forms the creamy body and bulk of the filling once sieved and moistened.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set it as they cook, while whipped whites add lift.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it cream smoothly with the butter.
Flour
Adds a small amount of structure so the filling holds its shape when baked.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg whites, which gives the filling lift. Stirring hard would deflate them and leave a denser pie.

“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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