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Cheesecakes

Uses raw milk; ensure milk is pasteurized.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Prepare puff pastry by mixing butter, flour, and lemon juice.

  2. For cheese curd, add a piece of cow's rennet to 1 quart of warm milk and let it sit for 1 hour.

  3. Cut the curd into squares and let it sit for another hour.

  4. Press the curd to remove moisture, then dry it and rub it through a sieve.

  5. Use the same quantity of curd as potatoes for the filling.

  6. Finish the cheesecakes as described for Bouchees de Dames.

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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + cheesetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, cheese):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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