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Dessert

Brandt-wine Cheesecake

A cheesecake made with milk curd, bread, butter, sugar, eggs, brandy, wine, rose water, spices, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Brandt-wine Cheesecake

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.

Make the curd

  1. Boil the milk.

  2. Beat 4 eggs.

  3. Stir the beaten eggs into the boiling milk until it thickens into a curd.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat and let it cool.

  5. Mash the curd very fine.

  6. Crumb the bread.

  7. Mix the crumbled bread with the curd.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the curd and bread mixture to the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. Whisk the remaining 4 eggs until thick and light.

  4. Pour the whisked eggs into the mixture.

  5. Gradually add the brandy, wine, rose-water, cinnamon, and grated nutmeg.

  6. Fold in the currants.

Bake

  1. Line a square tin pan with parchment.

  2. Pour the filling into the pan.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Currant + brandytop 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. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard-like curd and give the cake its structure as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, fine-textured crumb through its fat.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps cream with butter to trap air.
Milk
Forms the curd with the eggs and adds moisture to the filling.
Bread
Soaks up liquid and adds body so the filling holds together.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chew throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Stir the beaten eggs into the boiling milk. Adding hot milk to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Stirring steadily while the mixture heats lets the egg proteins thicken it smoothly into a curd instead of lumps.

Swap the currant

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

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

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