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Dessert

Chelsea Cheese Cakes

A puff pastry cake filled with a sweet custard and topped with citron or glacé fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chelsea Cheese Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pans

  1. Line pastry pans with puff pastry cuttings.

  2. Roll the pastry smoothly and press it into the pans, pricking the bottom to prevent puffing.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine eggs, sugar, butter, and cream, and flavor with essence.

  2. Gently bring the mixture to a simmer without boiling, stirring until ready for use.

Bake

  1. Spoon the mixture into the lined pans, place a piece of citron or glacé fruit on top, dust with fine sugar, and bake.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the filling and give it a rich, custard-like structure as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown on the surface as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture in the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, producing a softer, smoother filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a simmer. Heating the egg mixture gently without boiling keeps the eggs from curdling or turning grainy, so the filling stays smooth and evenly set.

“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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