Why is cheesecake a pie

In these unsure times, even as anti-intellectualism takes hold in the Western world, we should look toward our institutions for clarity and guidance. Cheesecake is a tart. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Filed under: Op-Eds. Pocket Flipboard Email.

This is a slice of pie. Or maybe a slice of tart. Shutterstock Somehow, even though it is clearly not a cake, there are people in the world who still believe that cheesecake is a cake. So are lemon bars pie? Sure, I guess so. Who gets to decide? At least we can all agree on one thing: Cheesecake is most definitely anything but cake. Can't get enough of Eater?

Sign up for our newsletter. More From Eater. Sign up for the Sign up for Eater's newsletter The freshest news from the food world every day Thanks for signing up! Check your inbox for a welcome email. Back in the day, and to a lesser extent even today, everything was a cake. Generically, any small block of solid substance is a cake. For all I know, it could be delicious.

It certainly looks delicious. Cakes are everywhere. A cake of soap is still a bar of soap. The problem comes with pastry because cake means something specific, which is generally a baked good, primarily made of flour, sugar, fat, and eggs, leavened in the oven during the baking cycle. Nobody should argue that crab cakes should be allowed in a wedding cake competition, because they are clearly different things. The name only takes you so far.

There are a few of classes of pie. Most standard pies as opposed to pocket pies are round, not much more than a couple of inches tall, and wider at the top than at the bottom. Pies, traditionally, have two types of crust: the pastry crust and the crumb crust. Inside a pie can be just about anything, but when I think of pie, two categories stand out: fruit and custard.

Fruit pies are things like apple, blueberry… you know what a fruit pie is. A custard pie is milk or cream mixed with sugar and egg yolk and some additives, and usually baked. As I say, there are other variations pecan, peanut butter, pudding, etc. With a minor change in appearance, any pastry that is a crumb crust filled with custard and baked, in my mind, is a pie.

The addition of cream cheese is no more a disqualifier than the addition of bourbon would be. By your definition, then what is my cheesecake because it doesn't have a crust so it would not qualify as a pie by any definition. Well, really the height depends on the style of cheesecake. I will admit to favoring the New York style cheesecake as the form I was describing. Already a subscriber? Log in. Let the cake debate begin! The word cake originated around — It stems from the Old Norse kaka and is related to the German word for cake : kuchen.

The sweetened breads we all know and love as cake you know, the stuff beneath the frosting can take on many flavors. So long as it checks the basic ingredients and is a sweetened bread , cakes can be endlessly customizable. In short, there are plenty of desserts that fall into the broad cake category.

There are also some desserts that take the name of cake somewhat controversially. It has all the right ingredients: cheese, sugar, butter, vanilla, and a graham cracker crust.

But is it actually a cake as the name suggests? Cheesecake is typically made with a cheese like ricotta , cream cheese , or Neufchatel a creamy French cheese.

Other ingredients include sugar, egg, and graham cracker. An early version of a cheesecake with baked cheese, flour, and often honey has been made since the era of ancient Greece. The ancient Romans had a similar recipe as well, and they called it placenta or libum.

A cheesecake is similar to a flan , but with a crust. What cheesecake lacks are some of the basic ingredients that make a cake, well, a cake. Essentially, a fruitcake is simply a loaded cake.