Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, 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.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make and bake the filling
In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the sweet cream, sugar, butter, flour, and nutmeg.
Prepare a pie crust and pour the mixture into it.
Grate nutmeg over the top.
Bake until set, similar to a custard pie.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,920 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Eggs
- Set the filling into a custard-like structure as they cook.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps give the filling its smooth, tender texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender, silky mouthfeel.
- Sweet cream
- Adds moisture and richness to the custard filling.
- Flour
- Helps thicken the filling and stabilise its texture as it bakes.
The step that matters
Bake until set. Pull the pie when the centre barely wobbles. Eggs keep setting as they cool, so over-baking can make the custard grainy, cracked, or rubbery.
“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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