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Dessert

Cheese Pie

A sweet cheese pie with currants baked in a rich crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,655 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cheese Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the sour milk curd thoroughly.

  2. Mix the curd with eggs, sweet milk, sugar, and currants.

  3. Line a deep pie tin with the rich crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the crust.

  2. Dust the top with cinnamon.

  3. 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. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

Sour milk curd
Forms the body of the filling, giving it a soft, cheese-like texture.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm when baked.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and makes the filling smooth and tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and contributes to browning on the surface.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the pie.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves a runny filling while overbaking can make it dry and cracked. Check that the centre barely wobbles before removing the pie.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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