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Dessert

Cheese Pie

A baked cheese pie with a cake crust, made from cottage cheese, cream, flour, eggs, sugar, lemon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. 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 the crust

  1. On a floured board, roll out a small quantity of Kuchen Dough.

  2. Line a greased deep pie plate with the dough.

Make the filling

  1. Press cottage cheese through a sieve or ricer.

  2. Mix cottage cheese with cream, dissolved flour, salt, egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Fill the pie plate with the mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) until brown and 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cottage cheese + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 body of the filling, giving it a creamy, soft-set texture when baked.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift and airiness, while yolks help the filling set.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, producing a richer, smoother filling.
Flour
Helps stabilize the filling so it holds its structure as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and contributes to browning on the surface.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Stiff whites trap air that gives the filling lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from deflating before the pie reaches the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, cream, flour, 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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