Skip to main content
Dessert

Cheese Cake

A baked cheese cake made with Dutch cheese, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon peel, currants, and citron, served in pie plates.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Rub the Dutch cheese smooth with a spoon.

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl, then gradually add the sugar.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks, salt, lemon peel, currants, and citron.

Line the pans

  1. Line two pie plates with kuchen dough, rolling it out thin.

  2. Butter the pie plates heavily and let the dough rise for 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold into the cheese mixture.

  2. Pour the cheese mixture into the prepared pie plates and bake immediately.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Dutch cheese
Forms the body of the filling, giving the cake its dense, creamy structure.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps soften the butter when creamed.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling as it sets.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and lightness to the filling.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and a chewy texture.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites and bake immediately. Whipped egg whites hold air bubbles that give the filling lift. They deflate as they stand, so the mixture should go into the pans and into the oven right after folding.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, butter, sugar, lemon. 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.

More cheese cake recipes

Almond 9Cottage 7Curd 7Lemon 6Coconut 5Rice 5 See all 29 →

You might also like

Lemon PieLemon Pie37 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes