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Dessert

Orange Cheesecakes

A cheesecake flavored with Seville orange rinds, sugar, egg yolks, and butter, baked in puff pastry-lined tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Orange Cheesecakes

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Orange Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the rinds

  1. Cut the oranges in half and remove the pulp.

  2. Boil the rinds, changing the water 3-4 times to remove bitterness.

  3. Drain and pound the rinds in a mortar.

Make the filling and bake

  1. Add the sugar, beaten egg yolks, and melted butter; mix well.

  2. Bake in small tins lined with puff pastry at 400°F (200°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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set, giving the cheesecake a soft, custard-like structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the bitterness of the orange rind.
Seville oranges
Provide the citrus flavour and aroma from the rinds and pulp.

The step that matters

Boil the rinds in several changes of water. Seville orange rind is very bitter. Repeated boiling in fresh water draws out the bitter compounds, so the rind tastes pleasantly citrusy instead of harsh.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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