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Dessert

Cheese Cakes

A sweet cheese cake made with curdled milk, butter, sugar, currants, candied citrus, almonds, eggs, and a butter‑flour paste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. 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. Add ½ cup of rennet to 3 quarts of new milk and let it stand in a warm place until it curdles.

  2. Drain the curds well and mix in ½ pound of fresh butter and pounded sugar to taste.

  3. Add washed currants, citron, candied orange and lemon peels, pounded Jordan almonds, and 3 beaten eggs.

Make the paste

  1. For the paste, mix ½ pound of sifted flour with ¼ pound of fresh butter and enough cold water to form a dough.

  2. Roll out the paste and line the pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the pans with the curd mixture.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven 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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the curds that give the cake its body.
Rennet
Causes the milk to curdle, setting the proteins into a solid mass.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.
Eggs
Bind the curd mixture and help it set when baked.
Sifted flour
Forms the dough that gives the pastry shell its structure.

The step that matters

Letting the milk curdle fully. Rennet must be given time in a warm place to set the milk into firm curds. If the curds stay loose, the drained mixture will not hold together and the filling will be weak and watery once baked.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, orange, lemon, almond, egg. 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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