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Dessert

Cheesecakes

A baked dessert made from milk curds, eggs, sugar, spices, rose water, fortified wine, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curds

  1. Set the milk as for cheese and gently whey it.

  2. Break the curds in a mortar and add the egg yolks, egg whites, sugar, nutmeg, rose-water, and sack. Mix all the ingredients together well.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the cream over the fire to make a hasty pudding, then combine it with the other mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill your patty pans and bake immediately in a moderate oven until they rise well.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Nutmeg + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Milk
Forms the curds that give the cheesecake its body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift so the cakes rise in the oven.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake immediately in a moderate oven. The beaten and combined mixture starts losing its air and lift as it stands, so filling the pans and baking right away helps the cakes rise well.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Peppermintfits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, rose, wine, cream. 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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