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Dessert

Bread Cheesecakes

A cheesecake made with sliced bread soaked in boiling cream, mixed with eggs, butter, nutmeg, currants, and wine or brandy, then baked.

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.

Soak the bread

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

Make the filling

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

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

  3. Stir in the currants and white wine or brandy.

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
Soaked in hot cream, it forms the body and soft structure of the filling.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the cream and bread into a firm, custard-like texture.
Cream
Softens the bread and adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth crumb.
Currants
Provide pockets of concentrated sweetness and chew throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Baking until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Removing the cheesecake too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery.

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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