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Bread

Bread Cheese Cakes

A baked cheese cake made with sliced French roll, milk, eggs, butter, nutmeg, lemon essence, sugar, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Bread Cheese Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA very warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a very warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pour boiling milk over the sliced French roll and let it cool.

  2. Add eggs, melted butter, nutmeg, essence of lemon, sugar, and currants to the cooled mixture and mix everything together until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a puff pastry shell like other cheese cakes.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven 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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

French roll
Soaked in boiling milk, it softens and forms the moist, custard-like body of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when baked, giving the filling its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing a tender texture and smooth mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves a runny filling, while overbaking can make it dry and rubbery, so the cake should be checked for a set centre.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

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