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Dessert

Almond Cheesecakes

Almond Cheesecakes are baked pastries filled with a mixture of sweet and bitter almonds, sugar, butter, cream, eggs, brandy, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Almond Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Blanch, chop, and pound the sweet and bitter almonds.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the almonds with sugar, butter, cream, eggs, brandy, and lemon juice.

Bake

  1. Fill patty pans lined with puff pastry three-quarters full with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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.
Bitter almonds
Add a deeper, aromatic almond flavour to the filling.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Filling the patty pans. Filling them only three-quarters full leaves room for the filling to rise and set without spilling over. Overfilling can cause the mixture to bubble out and burn, and underfilling leaves the pastry dry at the edges.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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