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Dessert

Almond Cheese Cake

A cheese cake made with rennet curd, almonds, currants, and puff pastry edges.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Almond Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak rennet in cold water overnight, then drain and dry.

  2. Warm the milk without boiling, then stir in rennet water and let it sit in a warm place until curd forms.

  3. Drain off the whey and cool the curd.

  4. Wash and dry currants, then dredge with flour.

  5. Blanch and peel almonds, then grind them in a mortar with rose water until smooth.

Make the filling

  1. Beat egg yolks until light, then mix with curd gradually.

  2. Add cream, mixed spice, and stir in the almond paste and currants alternately.

  3. Mix thoroughly and pour into buttered dishes, adding puff pastry around the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Rennet
Curdles the milk, giving the cheese its firm, sliced body.
Milk
Forms the curd base that sets into the cheese.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help it set firm when baked.
Sweet almonds
Provide the main body, flavour and richness of the filling.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the filling.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, softer texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Baking immediately after mixing. The filling must go into the oven straight away, because the egg yolks and curd begin setting only once heated. Letting the mixture sit can cause a loose, uneven set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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