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Dessert

Cheesecakes, Bread

A cheesecake made with soaked bread crumbs, butter, sugar, currants, nutmeg, eggs, and brandy, baked in puff pastry-lined tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheesecakes, Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Pour boiling milk over bread crumbs and let soak briefly.

  2. Beat soaked crumbs with melted butter until combined.

  3. Once cool, add sugar, currants, and grated nutmeg.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks and egg whites with brandy, then add to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Line tartlet tins with puff pastry and fill them halfway with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a quick oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the filling and soak up the milk to give a soft, moist body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the filling bind and turn tender.
Egg yolks and egg whites
Bind the filling and help it set into a light, custard-like structure when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its browning in the oven.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the mixture. Beating the yolks and whites with brandy and folding them in gently keeps the filling light. Overbeating or adding eggs to a hot mixture can cause uneven setting and a dense texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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