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Dessert

Cheesecakes, Another Way

A custard cheesecake made with currants, brandy, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheesecakes, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Mix the curd from 3 quarts of milk with 1 pound of currants, 12 ounces of sugar, ¼ ounce of cinnamon, ¼ ounce of nutmeg, and the finely chopped lemon.

  2. Add 8 egg yolks, 6 egg whites, 1 pint of scalded cream, and 1 glass of brandy to the mixture.

Line and bake

  1. Prepare light puff pastry.

  2. Line pattypans with the puff pastry.

  3. Fill the pattypans three parts full with the mixture.

  4. 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd that gives the filling its body.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the filling set firm as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the tartness of the currants and lemon.
Currants
Provide tart fruit flavour and juiciness to the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Egg-rich fillings set through gentle heat as proteins coagulate; overbaking makes them curdle, weep, and turn rubbery, so bake only until the centre is just firm.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, egg, 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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