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Dessert

Curd Cheese-cake

A baked dessert made from curdled milk, eggs, butter, sugar, nutmeg, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Cheese-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the curd

  1. Warm the milk and curdle it with rennet or 1 tablespoon of wine used to soak rennet.

  2. Once thickened, remove the curd with a ladle and drain it on a sieve.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the eggs.

  2. Mix in the drained curd, sugar, and softened butter.

  3. Add the nutmeg and currants.

  4. Adjust sugar to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Line pie plates with pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the mixture.

  3. Bake 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. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd that gives the cheesecake its body and tender set.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds to its softness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, moister texture to the filling.
Currants
Add pockets of sweet, chewy fruit throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Drain the curd until it is properly thickened. Curd that still holds too much whey will make the filling watery and stop it setting firmly in the oven. Wait until the curd has thickened fully before lifting it out, then drain it well on the sieve so the filling bakes up firm rather than soggy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg. 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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