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Dessert

Bread Cheesecakes

A sweet pastry made with bread crumbs, butter, milk, sugar, brandy, currants, eggs, and lemon rind, baked in small tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Bread Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Roll out the pastry and cut it into rounds to line small patty tins.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and butter and bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the bread crumbs, sugar, and nutmeg.

  3. Add the brandy, currants, and grated lemon rind.

  4. Beat the eggs and mix them in.

Bake

  1. Spoon a good teaspoonful of the mixture into each patty case.

  2. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White bread crumbs
Form the bulk of the filling and soak up the hot milk to create a soft, moist custard base.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and helps form a soft, custard-like filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing to a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot milk mixture over the crumbs. The hot liquid must be absorbed evenly so the crumbs soften fully; if the mixture is cooled or unevenly mixed, lumps of dry crumb remain and the filling bakes unevenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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