Name: To Make Curd Cheesecakes
Ingredients: 1 dish of curds (the size of a large plate); ¼ pound butter; cream (to taste); sugar (to taste); nutmeg (to taste); ratafia or rose water (to taste); 4 eggs; ½ pound currants (well washed and dried)

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Curd Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

Work the butter into the curds and add cream and sugar to taste.
Grate in nutmeg and add ratafia or rose water.
Mix in the eggs and currants until well combined.

Bake

Bake with a nice crust underneath.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together494 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Nutmeg + rosetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Curds: Form the body of the cheesecake filling.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a tender texture.
Eggs: Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Currants: Add fruit chew and small pockets of sweetness throughout the filling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg, rose, egg):

Vanillafits better
Lemonfits better
Raspberryfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg, rose, 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.