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Dessert

Cheese Cake

A pastry-lined cheese cake made with dry curd, eggs, sugar, cream, butter, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the dry curd through a sieve.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the sieved curd, egg yolks, beaten egg whites, sugar, cream, melted butter, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill puff pastry-lined molds with the mixture.

  2. Dust the tops with cinnamon.

  3. Bake until done, then sift powdered sugar over the top before serving.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dry curd
Forms the body of the filling, giving the cheesecake its dense, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like structure when baked.
Egg whites
Add lightness and help the filling rise and set with air trapped inside.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the top brown lightly in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing a smooth mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Rub the dry curd through a sieve. Sieving breaks up lumps and fine curds so the filling becomes smooth and even instead of grainy after baking.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, cream, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, butter, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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