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Dessert

Chess Pie

A custard pie with eggs, butter, sugar, and flavoring baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. 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.

Prepare

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

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until frothy.

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then quickly combine with the yolk mixture and desired flavoring.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pie crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and sweetened, then spread over the pie filling.

  2. Return to the oven and bake until the top is delicately colored.

  3. Cut and serve before cooling.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling and whites form a light, set topping.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the yolks become frothy.

The step that matters

Baking the topping until delicately colored. Egg whites and yolks set as they heat, and the pie can turn rubbery or cracked if overbaked. Watch for a delicate golden color rather than a deep brown.

“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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