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Dessert

Common Cheese Cake

A cheese cake made with milk, butter, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and currants, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Common Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Boil a quart of rich milk.

  2. Beat eight eggs and add them to the milk; let the milk and eggs boil together until they form a curd.

  3. Drain the curd through a very clean sieve until all the whey is removed.

Mix the filling

  1. Place the curd in a deep dish and mix it with half a pound of butter, working them together until well combined.

  2. When the mixture is cold, add the beaten yolks of four eggs, four large tablespoonfuls of powdered white sugar, and grated nutmeg; mix well.

  3. Stir in, gradually, half a pound of currants that have been previously picked, washed, dried, and dredged with flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay puff pastry around the rim of the dish.

  2. Bake the cheese cake for half an hour.

  3. Serve the cheese cake cold.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

452Calories
15 gProtein
26 gFat
42 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

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

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the curd and add richness and structure to the filling as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the curd a smooth, tender texture.
Currants
Provide tart, fruity bursts of flavour throughout the cake.
Powdered white sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the richness of the curd.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the cold curd. If the curd mixture is still hot when the beaten yolks go in, the eggs can scramble and become grainy instead of blending smoothly into the filling.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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