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 ↓
Cheese Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Make the curds
Heat sour milk in a brass skillet and add vinegar until it curdles.
Remove the curds from the whey and beat them well.
Bake and serve
Add the washed butter, beaten eggs, sugar, and season with mace or nutmeg.
Pour the mixture into small pastry molds.
Bake until set and serve cold.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,806 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + macetop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,346 recipes
Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sour milk
- Its curds form the body of the cheesecake filling.
- Eggs
- Set when baked, giving the filling structure and firmness.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, softening the texture of the curds.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the soured milk.
The step that matters
Baking until set. The filling thickens as the egg proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves it loose and wet, while overbaking makes it dry and grainy, so the cook should watch for it to set just through.
Swap the mace
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, vinegar, butter, egg, sugar):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Tarragonfits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, vinegar, butter, egg, 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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