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Dessert

Cheesecakes, Home-made

A baked cheesecake made with eggs, milk, sugar, currants, butter, rose‑water, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cheesecakes, Home-made

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the curd

  1. In a saucepan, combine 4 well-beaten eggs with 1 pint of boiling milk and heat until it curdles.

  2. Pour off the whey and drain the curd on an inverted sieve until dry.

Fill and bake

  1. Mix in 2 tablespoons of sugar, ¼ teaspoon of salt, 6 ounces of washed currants, 1 egg-sized piece of melted butter, 2 tablespoons of rose-water or cream, and ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon.

  2. Line tartlet tins with puff pastry and fill them three-quarters full with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

  5. Currant + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Coagulate with the milk to form the curd that gives the filling its body.
Milk
Curdles with the eggs to form the soft, creamy base of the filling.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture through the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a tender mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Drain the curd until dry. Excess whey left in the curd would make the filling wet and loose, so it may not set firmly or may make the pastry soggy during baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

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