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Dessert

Chess Pie

A custard pie made with eggs, sugar, bread crumbs, butter, raisins, and lemon flavoring, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Make the filling

  1. Combine eggs, sugar, bread crumbs, butter, raisins, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Heat gently and add lemon flavoring to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Beat reserved egg whites until stiff peaks form; set aside.

  2. Pour filling into pie crust and top with beaten egg whites.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the top is golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set the filling into a custard, and the whites lighten the topping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the beaten whites hold their stiff peaks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the filling body and a soft, thick texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender mouthfeel in the filling.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and a chewy texture throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Heat the filling gently. Egg proteins begin to set around 160°F and can scramble or curdle if the mixture gets too hot too fast. Gentle, steady heat keeps the filling smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, bread, butter, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, bread, butter, raisin. 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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