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Dessert

To Make Cheese Cakes

A baked cheese cake made with milk, rennet, butter, sugar, biscuits, eggs, almonds, rose water, currants, and a sweet glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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To Make Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

To Make Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Warm the milk near the fire and add the rennet until it curdles.

  2. Drain the curd through a coarse cloth and gently break it apart with your fingers.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix in the butter, sugar, nutmeg, grated biscuits, egg yolks, egg white, beaten almonds, rose water, sack, and currants.

  2. Combine all ingredients well and pour into buttered tin pans.

  3. Bake until set and golden, then turn out and sprinkle with sack and sugar.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + biscuittop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Warmed and curdled with rennet to form the curd that gives the cake its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set into a firm, tender custard-like texture when baked.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps the mixture set and hold its shape in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Naples biscuits
Add dry crumb structure and absorb moisture from the curd mixture.

The step that matters

Drain the curd gently. Pressing or breaking the curd too hard can make it crumble unevenly or release too much whey, leaving the finished cake dry or loose. Draining gently keeps enough moisture for a tender, cohesive texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, biscuit, egg, almond, rose):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, biscuit, egg, almond, rose. 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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