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Dessert

Cheesecakes of Almonds

A tartlet filled with a sweet and bitter almond cheesecake mixture baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cheesecakes of Almonds

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Finely pound the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. In a bowl, mix the pounded almonds with the egg yolks and sugar; beat well for 10 minutes.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the almond mixture.

  4. Add the lemon rind and brandy; mix gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Roll out the puff pastry and cut into circles to line tartlet pans.

  2. Fill each pastry shell halfway with the cheesecake mixture.

  3. Bake until lightly golden; they will take very little time to bake.

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 + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,969 recipes

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

  3. Egg + brandytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet almonds
Provide the main body and nutty flavour of the filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the almond mixture together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the filling and help it rise.
Bitter almonds
Add a sharp, intense almond aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives the filling its lightness. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, so fold gently and stop once no streaks remain.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, egg, sugar, brandy. 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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