Name: To Make Bread Cheese-Cakes
Ingredients: 1 penny loaf, sliced thin; 1 pint boiling cream; 8 eggs; ½ pound butter; 1 nutmeg, grated; ½ pound currants, washed and dried; 1 tablespoon brandy or white wine

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

To Make Bread Cheese-Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

Pour boiling cream over the sliced penny loaf and let it stand for 2 hours.

Make the filling

Beat together the eggs, butter, and grated nutmeg.
Add the currants and brandy or white wine to the mixture.

Bake

Bake in raised crusts or petty pans 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.

Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,311 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).
Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,127 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Penny loaf: Soaked in boiling cream, it softens and becomes a moist, tender base for the filling.
Eggs: Beaten into the mixture, they set during baking to give the cakes their firm, custard-like body.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth texture and rounded flavour.
Currants: Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.
Boiling cream: Softens the bread and carries moisture into the filling, helping it bake evenly.

The step that matters

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

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Raisinfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, nutmeg, 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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Brandy Cream21 recipes

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To Make Bread Cheese-Cakes