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Dessert

Excellent Cheesecakes

A custard cheesecake made with milk curd, almonds, candied fruit, currants, and brandy, baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Excellent Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the curd

  1. Heat the milk and add rennet. Let it sit near the fire to curdle.

  2. Drain the curd from the whey and place it on a sieve.

  3. Mix in the butter and rub it through a spoon into a bowl.

Make the filling

  1. Add sugar, almonds, candied citron, orange peel, lemon peel, currants, and brandy.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix them into the curd mixture.

Bake

  1. Prepare a pastry with flour, sugar, butter, and water, then roll it out.

  2. Fill the pastry with the curd mixture and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 makes up the body of the filling.
Rennet
Enzymes that coagulate the milk into curds separate from whey.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the curd filling as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the curd texture.
Sweet almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the curd. Pressing the curd through a sieve or spoon breaks up lumps so the filling bakes smooth; leftover lumps give an uneven, grainy texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, almond, orange, lemon, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, almond, orange, lemon, brandy. 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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