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Dessert

Cave Cheesecakes

A baked dessert made from curd, butter, sugar, egg, and flavoring, set in pastry-lined pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cave Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the curd

  1. Heat 4 pints of milk to boiling point.

  2. Add 1 pint of buttermilk mixed with 1 egg.

  3. When the milk separates into curd, strain it.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter.

  2. Add sugar, curd, egg, and flavoring, mixing well.

Bake and serve

  1. Line patty pans with pastry.

  2. Fill the pans with the mixture.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Curd
Forms the main body of the filling, giving the cheesecake its dense, creamy structure.
Egg
Binds the filling and sets it into a firm, sliceable texture when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, more tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give the baked surface a light browning.
Buttermilk
Adds mild acidity and tang, helping the milk separate into curd.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins firm as they heat. Overbaking tightens them too far, squeezing out moisture and leaving the filling dry, grainy, or cracked. Remove once the centre is just set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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