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Dessert

Cheese Cakes

A sweet and sour milk-based cake with lemon, egg yolks, sugar, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cheese Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Scald the sweet and sour milk in a double boiler.

  2. Strain the milk through cheesecloth.

  3. Add the slightly beaten egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and salt to the curd.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a small patty tin with good pastry.

  2. Fill the tin with the mixture and sprinkle with chopped almonds.

  3. Bake until the mixture is firm to the touch.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set, adding richness and a firm texture.
Sour milk
Curdles when scalded, forming the body of the cheese-like filling and a tang.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and softness to the curd.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the juice and rind.
Almonds
Add nutty flavor and crunch on top.

The step that matters

Bake until the mixture is firm to the touch. Egg yolks set as they heat, so the filling is done when it is just firm. Overbaking squeezes out liquid and makes the custard grainy and dry.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Milletfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, lemon, 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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