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Cheesecakes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and biscuit match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Warm the cream and mix it with the warm milk.

  2. Add rennet and stir gently until curds form.

  3. Drain the curd in a linen bag without squeezing too much.

  4. Break the curd into fine pieces in a mortar.

  5. Mix in the almonds, macaroons, egg yolks, nutmeg, dissolved plums, and sugar.

  6. Stir in the melted butter and plumped currants, then let cool.

  7. For the puff pastry, mix flour with cold water and roll it out.

  8. Gradually incorporate the fresh butter, dusting with flour as you roll.

  9. Use the pastry as needed for the cheesecakes.

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 + biscuittop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  4. Almond + plumtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

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

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

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

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

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, almond, biscuit, egg, nutmeg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More cheesecake recipes

Lemon 96Almond 47Rice 25Apple 21Curd 14Orange 14 See all 71 →

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