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Dessert

Cheese Cake

A baked almond cake made with blanched almonds, rose water, egg whites, sugar, bitter almond extract, and lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and rose are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,465 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pound the blanched almonds, adding rose water to prevent them from oiling.

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Mix the beaten egg whites with sugar and extract of bitter almonds.

  4. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the lined pans with the almond mixture.

  2. Bake in a quick oven at 400°F (200°C), watching closely to prevent burning.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

  4. Rose + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Almond + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Form the main body of the cake, providing flavour and a dense, moist filling.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they trap air and give the filling a light, set structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps the beaten egg whites hold their shape.
Puff pastry
Forms the lined shell that holds the filling and bakes up crisp at the edges.

The step that matters

Baking with close watch. The almond mixture contains sugar and egg, which brown quickly in a hot oven. Watching closely prevents the surface and pastry from burning before the filling is 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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