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Dessert

Bread Cheesecakes

A sweet cheesecake made by soaking bread in boiling cream, then mixing with eggs, butter, nutmeg, currants, and wine, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Slice the penny loaf as thin as possible.

  2. Pour the boiling cream over the bread and let it stand for 2 hours.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs, butter, and grated nutmeg together.

  2. Mix the egg mixture into the cream and bread.

  3. Add the currants and white wine or brandy, and mix well.

Bake

  1. Bake in patty pans or raised crusts at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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

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

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Currant + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf
Forms the bulk of the filling and soaks up the cream to give a soft, custard-like body.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set on baking to give it a firm, sliceable structure.
Cream
Soaks into the bread and carries richness and moisture through the filling.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the texture and gives a smooth, tender crumb.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy fruit through the set filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the cheesecake too early leaves it runny, while overbaking makes it dry and tough, so check for a firm centre.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, nutmeg, white wine. 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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