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Dessert

Citeon Cheesecakes

A custard cheesecake flavored with citron, almonds, and orange‑flower water, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit 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 ↓

Citeon Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Boil the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with the cooled cream.

  3. Heat the mixture until it boils and curdles.

  4. Blend the blanched almonds with orange-flower water or vanilla essence.

  5. Add the almond mixture, grated biscuits, and sliced citron to the curdled cream.

  6. Sweeten to taste.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Line small pans with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pans three-quarters full with the mixture.

  3. Garnish each cheesecake with strips of blanched almonds and sliced citron.

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. Almond + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Orange + biscuittop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together371 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the rich, smooth body of the filling once it is heated and curdled.
Egg yolks
Heat-set proteins that thicken the cream and give the filling its structure.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the filling.
Naples biscuits
Soak up liquid and add texture and sweetness to the filling.
Citron
Adds a bright, aromatic citrus flavour that cuts the richness of the cream.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until it boils and curdles. Heating the egg yolks and cream must be controlled so the proteins set into a thick filling. Overheating can make the mixture grainy or separate, so the curds stay smooth only when the heat is watched closely.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, almond, biscuit, sugar. 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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