Why is cheesecake called a cake when it’s clearly a pie?

Question

Why is cheesecake called a cake when it’s clearly a pie?

In: 17

Answer 1

Alton Brown covered part of this on Good Eats. Cheesecake is a custard pie, as its structure comes from egg and dairy proteins, and typically there is a crumb crust on bottom. As such, one can’t expect a cheesecake to behave like a cake during the baking process. He didn’t, however, cover the linguistics.