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Dessert

Curd Cheesecakes

A baked curd cheesecake made with milk curd, butter, sugar, lemon peel, currants, eggs, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Curd Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the curd

  1. Turn 1 quart of milk with a little rennet and drain off the whey.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the curd with the butter, sugar, lemon peel, currants, eggs, and almonds.

Bake

  1. Line patty-pans with the crust and fill them three-quarters full with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 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. Butter + creamtop 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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Turned with rennet to form the curd that makes up the body of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the curd and filling so it sets firm when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, moist texture to the filling.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and body to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Draining the whey from the curd. Whey left in the curd makes the filling watery, so it may not set firmly and can make the crust soggy. Draining well gives a dense, sliceable texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, cream, sugar, lemon, almond. 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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