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Dessert

Royal Cheesecakes

A baked cheesecake made with stale spongecakes, butter, eggs, sugar, milk, and almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Royal Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Crumble the stale spongecakes and add the milk. Let it stand for 30 minutes.

  2. Squeeze the mixture as dry as possible.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the melted butter, beaten eggs, sugar, and essence of almonds.

  2. Line tins with pastry and fill with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale spongecakes
Form the bulk of the filling and absorb the milk to become a soft base.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, more tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the crumbled cake so it softens and blends into the filling.

The step that matters

Squeeze the mixture as dry as possible. Excess liquid left in the soaked cake keeps the filling wet, so it may not set firmly and can make the pastry soggy during baking.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Cocoafits less well
  4. Walnutfits less well

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