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Dessert

Cheese Cake

A custard-like cake made with eggs, milk, sugar, currants, lime rind, brandy, and butter, baked in pastry-lined pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the curd

  1. Beat the eggs well.

  2. In an enamel bowl, bring the milk to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, pour in the eggs and mix.

  4. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve to drain off the whey.

Prepare and bake

  1. Add sugar, salt, currants, butter, lime rind, brandy, and milk to the curd and mix well.

  2. Grease some patty pans and line them with short crust pastry.

  3. Half fill the lined pans with the mixture and bake 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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the curd and give the filling its structure as they cook.
Milk
Forms the base of the curd, adding moisture and a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, softer mouthfeel.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the savoury-leaning curd.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and fruitiness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the filling sets firm. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it dry and grainy.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, currant, butter, 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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