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Cheese Cake (Lb cups flour teaspoonfuls)
1 lb. pot cheese. 1/2 lb. (2 cups) flour 2 teaspoonfuls baking powder Juice 1/2 lemon 6 ozs. (3/4 cup) sugar 6 ozs. (3/4 cup) butter 1 gill (1/2 cup) milk 1 egg 1/2 cupful cleaned currants Rub half a cupful of the butter into the flour, add half a cupful of the sugar, baking powder, egg well beaten, milk, and strained juice of lemon.
Line a buttered baking earthenware dish with this paste. Mix the cheese smoothly with the rest of the sugar and butter. Spread this filling into the prepared casserole. Sprinkle the currants on the top and bake in a hot oven for half an hour.
An English curd tart in disguise: a rich soft pastry pressed into an earthenware dish, filled with sweetened cheese and strewn with currants. The ingredient list has a gap that has to be filled before you start.
- The missing cheeseThe method calls for cheese but the ingredient list never gives a quantity. For a 2-cup flour crust in a shallow dish, something in the region of 1 lb (about 2 cups) of drained fresh curd, farmer's cheese or well-drained ricotta-style curd is a reasonable amount; much less gives a thin, mean layer. This is a genuine omission in the original, not a conversion problem.
- What "cheese" means hereNot cream cheese in the modern block sense, and certainly not a hard grating cheese. Period English cheesecakes used fresh curds, either homemade from soured milk or bought as curd cheese, drained until it holds a shape. Cream cheese will work but gives a denser result.
- A gillHalf a cup, as the recipe helpfully notes itself. Older books often leave it unglossed.
- A hot ovenRead that as roughly 400-425F. Thirty minutes at that heat should set the filling and colour the currants; if the top is browning before the pastry base has firmed, drop to 375F for the last ten minutes.
- Splitting the butter and sugarOf the 3/4 cup each of butter and sugar, half a cup of each goes into the paste, leaving about 1/4 cup of each for the filling.
- Handling the pasteThis is a soft, cake-like dough rather than a rollable pastry. Press it into the buttered dish with floured fingers, up the sides as far as it will go, rather than trying to lift a rolled sheet into place.
- CurrantsDried currants, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. "Cleaned" means picked over for stems and grit, which modern packaged fruit no longer needs. Scattered on top they scorch easily, so press them lightly into the filling.
- Dish and yieldA 9-inch earthenware or ceramic baking dish, about 2 inches deep, suits the quantities. Serves six to eight, and like all curd tarts it eats better just warm or at room temperature than straight from the oven.
In British usage "cheesecake" long meant a curd tart: fresh milk curds sweetened, enriched with butter and egg, spiced or lemon-scented, and baked in a pastry case. Yorkshire curd tart is the best-known survivor, and it too is traditionally studded with currants. Recipes of this kind are generally said to have persisted from at least the seventeenth century into Edwardian cookery books, which is why this one carries no explanation of itself; the writer assumed a reader who knew what curd was and could buy or make it. The unbaked, gelatine-set, cream-cheese cheesecake that now dominates the name is a much later development and would have been unrecognisable here.