Name: Cheese Cakes
Ingredients: 1 Neufchatel cheese; ½ cup cream; scant ½ cup fine cracker crumbs; ½ grated nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon salt; grated rind and juice of 1 lemon; 4 eggs; ½ cup currants; 1 cup sugar

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the cheese and cracker crumbs together.
Add the yolks of the eggs beaten with sugar.
Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.
Stir in the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, salt, and nutmeg.
Add the cream and then the currants dredged lightly with flour.
Line two pie plates with pastry and fill with the mixture.
Cut into long thin strips.

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.

Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Cheese + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, cream, nutmeg, lemon, egg, sugar):

Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Orangefits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, cream, nutmeg, lemon, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.