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Dessert

English Curd Cheesecakes

A cheesecake made from curdled milk, butter, sugar, currants, lemon rind, cinnamon, eggs, brandy, and a short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

English Curd Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Turn the milk with rennet and let it curdle.

  2. Drain the curds over cheesecloth until very dry.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the curds with butter, powdered sugar, currants, lemon rind, cinnamon, egg yolks, and brandy.

  2. Beat the egg white separately and fold it into the mixture.

Make the pastry and bake

  1. Prepare a short crust pastry with flour, lard, butter, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Line tart tins with the pastry, fill with the curd mixture, and bake until light golden.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Milk
Curdles with rennet to form the curds that make up the cheesecake filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and add richness and binding to the curd mixture.
Egg white
Folded in separately to lighten the filling and add a little airiness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the short crust pastry that holds the filling.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the short crust pastry tender and crumbly.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to both the filling and the short crust pastry.

The step that matters

Drain the curds until very dry. Excess whey left in the curds makes the filling wet and loose, so it may not set firmly and can make the pastry soggy during baking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, egg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, lemon, cinnamon, egg, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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