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Dessert

Cheesecakes

A baked dessert made from curdled milk, butter, almonds, spices, eggs, and cream, set in pattypans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the curd

  1. Strain the whey from the curd of the milk until rather dry. Crumble the curd through a coarse sieve.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the crumbled curd with butter, almonds, orange-flower water, raisin wine, grated biscuit, currants, nutmeg, cinnamon, eggs, and cream until light.

Bake

  1. Fill pattypans three-quarters full with the mixture. Bake until set and lightly golden.

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 + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Raisin + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the curd that gives the cheesecake its body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the filling structure and holding it together.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the set custard texture.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy bursts of fruit throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Straining the curd until rather dry. Excess whey left in the curd makes the filling watery, so it may not set firmly in the pattypans when baked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, almond, orange, raisin, wine, biscuit):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, almond, orange, raisin, wine, biscuit. 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

Lemon 96Almond 47Rice 25Apple 21Curd 14Orange 14 See all 71 →

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