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Dessert

Cheese Cakes

A baked cheese cake made with milk, eggs, almonds, sugar, butter, rose water, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

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.

Make the curd

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and egg whites together.

  3. Stir the beaten yolks and whites into the boiling milk.

  4. Continue boiling until the curd is firm.

  5. Squeeze the curd in a cloth until very dry.

Make the filling

  1. Finely grind the blanched almonds.

  2. Mix the ground almonds with the curd.

  3. Add the sugar to the mixture.

  4. Add the melted butter to the mixture.

  5. Add the rose water to the mixture.

  6. Add the 4 eggs to the mixture.

  7. Mix the mixture well.

Bake

  1. Line small saucers with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the mixture into the saucers.

  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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd base that gives the filling its body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the mixture set when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness as the mixture sets.
Blanched almonds
Provide the bulk and nutty flavour of the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the baked filling.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, tender texture.

The step that matters

Squeeze the curd until very dry. Excess whey left in the curd adds moisture that stops the filling from setting firmly and can make the pastry soggy during baking.

“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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