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Dessert

Cheesecake Cases

A pastry case for cheesecake made from puff or tart pastry, curd, and optional lemon peel, candied citron, almonds, or currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cheesecake Cases

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.

Prepare the shells

  1. Roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick, large enough to cover the pans.

  2. Thin the paste slightly in the middle.

  3. Trim the edges and notch them round.

  4. Place some curd in the center of the paste.

  5. Top with a slice of lemon peel.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the pie

  1. Line a flat pie dish with paste.

  2. Add an extra rim around the edge.

  3. Spread curd over the paste, leaving an inch from the edge.

  4. Decorate the top with candied citron, lemon peel, sliced almonds, or currants.

  5. Bake in a preheated 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.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + curranttop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Almond + curranttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff or tart paste
Forms the crisp, flaky shell that holds the curd while it bakes.
Curd
Sets with heat to form the rich, creamy filling of the dish.
Lemon peel
Adds fragrant citrus aroma and a bright flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake the pie until the curd is set. Curd thickens as its proteins set with heat. Underbaking leaves the filling runny and soggy at the base, while overbaking makes it grainy, rubbery, and prone to weeping liquid.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, currant):

  1. Pistachiofits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, currant. 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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