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Dessert

Cheesecakes

A creamy pastry dessert made with cream, eggs, butter, almonds, and flavored with orange flower water and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,125 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until near boiling.

  2. Whisk in the egg yolks and half the egg whites until well combined.

  3. When it forms a fine curd, strain it through a fine sieve.

  4. While the curd is hot, slice in the butter and let it cool.

Flavour and bake

  1. Add the blanched almonds, orange-flower water, mace, and sugar to taste.

  2. Bake in puff paste until set.

  3. Serve cold.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body for the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set and add richness and colour.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the filling set lightly when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky texture and a rich mouthfeel.
Blanched almonds
Add body and a nutty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Forming the curd. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; if the mixture gets too hot it can scramble, leaving grainy lumps. Straining through a fine sieve removes any set bits so the filling stays smooth.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, butter, almond, orange, sugar. 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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