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Dessert

Common Cheesecakes

A baked cheesecake made with milk, rennet, butter, sugar, nutmeg, biscuits, eggs, almonds, rose water, white wine, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Common Cheesecakes

Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Common Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the curd

  1. Add rennet to milk and warm it by the fire until it is warm and curdled.

  2. Drain the curd through a sieve and gently break it apart with your fingers.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix in butter, sugar, nutmeg, grated biscuits, egg yolks, egg white, ground almonds, rose water, and white wine.

  2. Wash and add currants to the mixture, then mix well.

  3. Fill patty pans with the mixture and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + biscuittop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

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

  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

Milk
Forms the curd with rennet, which becomes the base of the filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set when baked.
Egg white
Adds structure and helps the filling set when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture.
Currants
Add tart, chewy bursts of fruit throughout the filling.
Naples biscuits
Add body and a light sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Fill patty pans with the mixture and bake until set. Baking too long or too hot can make the egg-rich filling dry and rubbery, while underbaking leaves it runny. Bake just until the centre is set and no longer liquid.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, biscuit, egg, almond, rose. 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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