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Dessert

Bread Cheesecakes

A cheesecake made with sliced French roll soaked in cream and baked with eggs, butter, nutmeg, brandy, sugar, currants, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Bread Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread and cream

  1. Slice the French roll very thinly.

  2. Pour boiling cream over the slices and let it cool.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, add the eggs, melted butter, nutmeg, brandy, sugar, and currants to the cooled cream.

  2. Mix well and place the mixture in puff pastry as you would for other cheesecakes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

French roll
Soaked in cream, the bread gives the filling body and a soft, custardy texture.
Cream
Soaks into the bread and adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a tender texture.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and aids browning of the top as it bakes.

The step that matters

Baking until golden brown. Eggs set as they bake, so the filling should be baked until just set and golden. Overbaking can make the custard dry and rubbery, while underbaking leaves it loose.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, nutmeg, brandy, 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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