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Dessert

Curd for Cheesecakes

A curd mixture made from milk, rennet, butter, eggs, sugar, nutmeg, and optional currants for use in cheesecakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Curd for Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Heat the milk in a clean pan by the fire until it is blood warm.

  2. Add the rennet; too much will make the curd hard and the whey salty.

  3. Wait for the milk to separate into curd and whey, then cut the curd into small pieces.

  4. Alternatively, add a small piece of alum (the size of a nutmeg) and let the milk boil.

  5. Strain the curd from the whey using a fine sieve, then let it drain or press it dry.

  6. Pass the curd through the sieve into a basin.

Finish and fill

  1. Melt the butter and mix it with the curd, then add the eggs.

  2. Add sugar, grated nutmeg, and currants if desired, and mix well.

  3. Fill the cases with the mixture.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Nutmeg + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 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

Milk
Forms the curd when set with rennet, and provides the body of the filling.
Rennet
Causes the milk to separate into curds and whey, setting the base of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the curd.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set.

The step that matters

Adding the rennet. Too much rennet makes the curd hard and the whey salty, as the milk sets too firmly and the flavour turns harsh. Measure it carefully and wait for the milk to separate.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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