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CHEESECAKES, HOME-MADE (another way)
Mix three heaped table-spoonfuls of ground rice with six of good milk till the paste is quite smooth, then pour on it gradually, stirring all the time, a pint of boiling milk. Put it on the fire, and let it simmer till it thickens, then add three table-spoonfuls of sugar, half a tea-spoonful of ground cinnamon, a little grated lemon-rind, and three ounces of butter. Mix these well together, pour the mixture into a basin, and when cool, stir in four eggs beaten up with a table-spoonful of brandy. Line the tartlet-tins with a good light crust, three-parts fill them with the mixture, and bake in a quick oven. Time to bake, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1d. each. Sufficient for four dozen cheesecakes.
A Victorian "cheesecake" of this type contains no cheese at all: it is a small open tartlet filled with a sweetened, thickened milk custard. The recipe as printed makes four dozen, so most cooks will want to quarter it.
- Ground riceThis is rice flour, sold as such today, though Victorian ground rice was slightly coarser than the fine flour used in Asian cooking. Either works; the coarser grind gives a faintly grainy set that is characteristic of the original.
- The pintCassell's is British, so a pint here is 20 fl oz (roughly 570 ml), not the American 16. With three heaped tablespoons of rice flour the mixture should thicken to a loose pouring custard, not a paste.
- A quick ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'quick' is conventionally reckoned at roughly 400-425F (200-220C). The pastry needs that sort of heat to set and colour in the twenty minutes given; a cooler oven leaves the bases soggy under the wet filling.
- Let it cool before the eggsThis is the hinge. Stirring four beaten eggs into a hot rice custard will scramble them and the filling will curdle in the oven. Cool the mixture to lukewarm, then beat the eggs in thoroughly.
- Three-parts fullFollow this literally. The egg makes the filling rise as it bakes and it will subside again as it cools; overfilled tins spill and weld the tartlets to the tray.
- Light crustA short sweet pastry or plain shortcrust rolled thin. There is no blind baking here, which is why the oven must be hot; use metal tins rather than ceramic so the base browns.
- Yield and scaleFour dozen small tartlet tins is a bakery-sized batch. A quarter of the recipe (5 fl oz milk plus about 3/4 of a heaped tablespoon of ground rice, 1 egg, 3/4 oz butter) fills a dozen.
- KeepingAn egg-and-milk filling, so these are best the day they are baked and should be refrigerated if kept beyond a few hours.
The word "cheesecake" long outlived the cheese in it. Medieval and early modern English cheesecakes were genuinely curd-based, made from fresh milk curds or curds pressed from soured milk, baked in a pastry case with eggs, butter, sugar and spice. The term had begun to drift well before the nineteenth century, covering small filled tartlets of that shape and richness, so cookbooks print lemon cheesecakes, almond cheesecakes and rice cheesecakes with no dairy curd anywhere in the list; the curd-filled Maid of Honour tart belongs to the older branch of the same family. Ground rice was a cheaper thickener than almonds or curd, and the costing Cassell's attaches, a penny each, was the sort of figure that mattered to the household readers the Dictionary was written for. Brandy and grated lemon-rind are a common Victorian flavouring pair for baked custards.