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Dessert

Cheesecakes Another Way

A cheesecake made from curd, cream, currants, and puff pastry, baked until set and golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cheesecakes Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Turn 3 quarts of milk into curd, then break it and drain the whey.

  2. Once dry, break the curd in a pan with 2 ounces of butter until smooth.

Fill and bake

  1. Add 1½ pints of thin cream or good milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and 3 ounces of currants.

  2. Mix well and prepare a light puff pastry in patty pans, filling them three-quarters full.

  3. Bake until set and 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg proteins set during baking, giving the filling its firm, sliceable body.
Milk
Forms the curd that becomes the body of the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, smoother texture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Puff pastry
Its layers of fat and dough puff up in the oven, forming a flaky case.

The step that matters

Fill the patty pans three-quarters full. Puff pastry rises as it bakes, and the filling sets as the eggs cook. Leaving room for both keeps the filling from overflowing and burning onto the pan.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, egg, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon, egg, 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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