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Dessert

English Cheese Cakes

A baked cheese cake made with cottage cheese, egg, sugar, cream, raisins, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

English 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line patty pans with pie crust.

Make and fill

  1. In a bowl, mix cottage cheese, egg, sugar, cream, and raisins.

  2. Fill the crusts with the cheese mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake until set and lightly golden.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Cottage cheese + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Forms the main body of the filling, giving it a soft, creamy, sliceable set when baked.
Egg
Binds the filling and sets it as it bakes, giving structure to the custard-like texture.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, keeping the filling smooth and tender rather than dry.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly at the edges in the oven.
Pie crust
Forms the base shell that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the filling sets firm. Overbaking squeezes out moisture and makes it grainy or dry, so check for a set center rather than baking by time alone.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, egg, sugar, cream. 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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