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Dessert

Cheese Cake

A sweet cheese cake made with cinnamon cake dough base, thickened with eggs and butter, topped with currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Gradually work in the egg yolks.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Thin the cheese with a little milk and mix everything together lightly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover a pan with a thin layer of cinnamon cake dough.

  2. Spread the cheese mixture on top of the dough.

  3. Brush the top with beaten egg and sprinkle with currants.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Pot cheese
Forms the main body of the filling and sets into a creamy, sliceable texture.
Eggs
Set the filling when baked and add richness, with whites also adding lightness.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the creamed mixture tender and rich.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps cream with butter to a light base.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Whites trap air when beaten, which gives the filling lift. Under-beaten whites add little volume, and over-beaten whites turn grainy and collapse, so stop when peaks stand upright.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, flour, cheese, milk, 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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