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Dessert

Almond Cheesecakes

A baked almond cheesecake made with sweet and bitter almonds, egg yolks, whites, sugar, lemon rind, brandy, apricot jam, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Almond Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the almonds

  1. Blanch the sweet and bitter almonds, then pound them very fine.

Make the mixture

  1. Combine the almond paste with the egg yolks and sugar, and beat well for 10 minutes.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff, then fold them into the almond mixture along with the lemon peel, jam, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Line tartlet tins with puff pastry and half fill them with the cheesecake mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until set, which will take a short time.

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. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Brandy + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  5. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavor of the filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a firm, custard-like texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the mixture and add structure as it bakes.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the egg yolks blend smoothly into the almond paste.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the filling its lightness. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser, heavier result.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, egg, sugar, brandy, apricot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, sugar, brandy, apricot. 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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