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Dessert

My Mothers Cheese Pie

A custard-like pie made with cottage cheese, egg, sugar, spices, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cottage cheese and milk work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 239 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

My Mothers Cheese Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Line a pie pan as you would for a custard pie.

Make and bake the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine cottage cheese, egg, sugar, and your choice of nutmeg, allspice, or cinnamon. Mix well and stir in enough milk to fill the pie pan.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared pie pan and bake until 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. Cottage cheese + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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 soft, creamy, sliceable texture.
Egg
Sets during baking, binding the filling into a firm custard-like pie.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning on the surface of the pie.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the filling so it bakes into a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as the custard heats; underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking at high heat can make it weep or crack. Bake gently and judge doneness by the centre wobbling only slightly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Dillfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, egg, sugar, milk. 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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