Kitchen Mysteries is a weekly exploration of oddities surrounding cooking and food. They could be recipes that fail when they shouldn’t, conflicting advice from different sources, or just plain weirdness. If it happens in a kitchen, and you’re not sure why, send atweet to The Food Geekto find out what’s happening.

John Feminellaasks via Twitter:

Background: Okay, in October I am going to be a judge in theCharlottesville Pie Fest, and a question came up about whether we could have cheesecake in the Pie Fest. Author of罗夫夫人的小书籍莫莉·考克斯·布莱恩（Mollie Cox Bryan）建议不，芝士蛋糕不是馅饼。我不同意，然后爆发了一个福伊的论点。当然，这是Twitter，所以每个单独的反驳都是140个或更少的字符，但是范围很大。这是我的一面，并补充了我在论证过程中读到的想法。

Back in the day, and to a lesser extent even today, everything was a cake. Generically, anysmall block of solid substance是蛋糕。我们有蟹饼（这是肉饼或壁球肉丸），我们有小便蛋糕（一点都不好吃），我们有yellowcake uranium, which I am pretty sure isn’t tasty, but I’ve not been close enough to try it. For all I know, it could be delicious. It certainlylooksdelicious.

蛋糕无处不在。仅仅因为东西是蛋糕并不意味着它也不是其他。肥皂蛋糕仍然是肥皂。问题出在糕点上是因为蛋糕意味着特定的东西，这通常是烘烤的好东西，主要是由面粉，糖，脂肪和鸡蛋制成的，在烘焙周期中在烤箱中发酵。没有人应该认为应该在婚礼蛋糕比赛中允许螃蟹蛋糕，因为它们显然是不同的事情。这个名字只会带您走那么远。

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. More often than not, pies are 8-10″ in diameter, though there are some mini-pies that are closer to 3-4″ in diameter.

传统上，馅饼有两种类型的外壳：糕点外壳和面包屑。The pastry crust we’ve covered before, and is a combination of flour, water, and fat, combined properly using, and baked. The crumb crust is a pulverized cookie or cracker that’s mixed with fat and baked just to set.

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.), but fruit and custard are the heavy hitters.

鉴于以上所有内容，让我们谈谈芝士蛋糕。通常，芝士蛋糕是圆柱形的，高4-6英寸或更多，有一个烤蛋ust中心和面包屑。外观的较小变化，在我看来，任何装满蛋ust and烤的糕点都是馅饼。添加奶油奶酪的不足比the addition of bourbonwould be.

So, in short, a cheesecake is a pie. It can also be a cake, but it can’t not be a pie.