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Dessert

Cheese Pie

A baked pie with a sour milk curd filling, eggs, sweet milk, sugar, currants, and cinnamon dusting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

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 the filling

  1. Rub the sour milk curd thoroughly.

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

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep pie tin with rich crust.

  2. Pour the mixture into the crust.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

Finish

  1. Dust with cinnamon before serving.

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
Provides the body and tangy, cheese-like flavour of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness, loosening the curd into a pourable filling.
English currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruitiness 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. Look for a centre that barely wobbles.

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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