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Dessert

Cheese Cakes

A baked dessert made from curdled sour milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cheese Cakes

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

  1. Heat the sour milk in a brass skillet and add vinegar until it curdles.

  2. Remove the curds from the whey and beat them well.

Mix and bake

  1. Stir in the butter, beaten eggs, sugar, and season with mace or nutmeg.

  2. Pour the mixture into small pastry molds and bake.

Serve

  1. 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.

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.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 set into the body of the cheesecake once heated and baked.
Vinegar
Its acid makes the warm milk separate into curds and whey.
Eggs
They bind the curds and set during baking to give structure.
Butter
Its fat adds richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
It adds sweetness and balances the tang of the sour milk.

The step that matters

Heating the sour milk until it curdles. Acid must separate the milk into firm curds and thin whey. Overheating or adding too much vinegar can make the curds tough and grainy, so the curds should be watched as they form and removed from the whey before mixing.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. 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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