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Mini Cheesecakes

"These aren't done with graham wafers, but with vanilla wafer cookies and are fast, easy and excellent! These are great to give away during the holidays! For a pretty presentation, you can top each one with a rosette of sweetened cream cheese or whipped cream right before serving. Any flavor fruit filling will do."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 890 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

The recipe

12 servings
Prep25 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

  2. Place one vanilla wafer in the bottom of each liner.

  3. In a large bowl, beat the softened cream cheese and white sugar until smooth and creamy.

  4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the lemon juice and mix until just combined.

  5. Spoon the cream cheese filling evenly over the wafers, filling each liner about three-quarters full.

  6. Bake for 15 minutes, until the centers are just set and only slightly jiggly. Cool completely on a rack.

  7. Refrigerate the cheesecakes for at least 2 hours to firm up.

  8. Spoon cherry pie filling over the top of each cheesecake just before serving.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Vanilla + cherrytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Vanilla + cream cheesetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Lemon + cherrytop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Vanilla and sugar share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,031 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vanilla, cream cheese, egg, sugar, cherry):

  1. Blueberrybetter flavor fit
  2. Strawberrybetter flavor fit
  3. Pineapplebetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vanilla, cream cheese, egg, sugar, cherry. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).