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Dessert

Fine Cheesecakes

A creamy cheesecake made with curdled milk, almonds, macaroons, egg yolks, butter, and puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit 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 ↓

Fine Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the curd

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until warm, then add the milk.

  2. Stir in rennet and let it curdle.

  3. Drain the curd in a linen cloth without squeezing too much.

  4. Pound the curd until fine like butter.

Make the filling

  1. Add the blanched almonds and macaroons, both finely ground.

  2. Mix in the beaten egg yolks, nutmeg, rose or orange-flower water, and sugar.

  3. Melt the butter and stir it into the mixture.

Make the pastry and bake

  1. Mix flour with cold water.

  2. Roll the dough out.

  3. Gradually incorporate the butter, dusting with flour as you roll.

  4. Combine the filling with the pastry.

  5. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  6. Add tincture of saffron for color.

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 + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, providing the body of the cheese filling.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the curd a softer, smoother texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the filling and help it set firmly when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the filling and pastry.
Sweet almonds
Add body and nutty flavor to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the richness of the curd.

The step that matters

Drain the curd without squeezing too much. Pressing hard forces out too much moisture and can make the curd dry and crumbly, while leaving too much whey makes the filling loose and slow to set in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, almond, biscuit, egg, rose, sugar. 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 cheesecake recipes

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