Home › Cakes › Cheese Cakes (Quart of milk Rennet ounce)
Cheese Cakes (Quart of milk Rennet ounce)
1 quart of milk Rennet 1 ounce of sugar A speck of nutmeg 1 1/2 ounces of butter 1 ounce of dried currants or small raisins Warm the milk, and add the rennet, using the amount prescribed on the package. Let the milk stand until the curd forms; then break up the curd, and strain off the whey. Add the other ingredients to the curd; line patty tins with pastry; fill them with the mixture, and bake.
A curd tart in the old English sense: fresh rennet curd, sweetened and spiced, baked in pastry cases. The recipe assumes you know how to set junket and how hot your oven runs, so both need filling in.
- The hinge: curd temperatureRennet sets milk at blood heat, roughly 98-105F. Much hotter and the enzyme is progressively destroyed; cold milk sets very slowly or not at all. Warm the quart just until it feels neutral on the inside of the wrist, stir in the rennet, and leave it undisturbed until set, usually 15-30 minutes.
- Rennet, then and now"Using the amount prescribed on the package" meant tablets or liquid animal rennet sold for junket. Modern liquid rennet is generally more concentrated, often a few drops per quart, so follow the current bottle rather than an old measure. Vegetarian microbial rennet will set the curd perfectly well here; traditional rennet comes from calf stomach.
- Draining the wheyBreaking the curd and straining gives a soft, wet curd. Let it hang in cheesecloth for 20-30 minutes until it stops dripping freely; a quart of milk yields only about 6-8 oz of drained curd, which is barely enough for six to eight small tarts.
- Weights to volume1 oz sugar is about 2 tablespoons, 1 1/2 oz butter about 3 tablespoons, 1 oz currants a scant 3 tablespoons. Soften the butter rather than melting it, or it will separate out of the curd.
- "A speck"A speck is less than a pinch, perhaps 1/16 teaspoon. Freshly grated nutmeg at that level is a background note, which is the intention.
- Patty tins and pastryPatty tins are shallow tartlet or muffin cups. Line them with a short crust; blind baking for 8 minutes firms the base against the damp filling.
- Oven and timeNo temperature is given. A moderately hot oven, around 375-400F for about 20 minutes, sets the pastry and lightly colors the tops; the filling should be just firm at the center, not puffed and cracked.
- No eggMany curd tart recipes of the period bind the curd with one or two eggs, and this version does not. Expect a looser, more crumbly filling that is best eaten the day it is baked.
Cheesecakes of this kind belong to the family of the English curd tart, made wherever there was surplus milk and a supply of rennet: the Yorkshire curd tart, still made with currants and nutmeg, is the best-known survivor, and the Richmond maids of honour are generally traced to the same family of rennet-curd pastries. The mixture has nothing to do with the soft-cheese cheesecake that later dominated American baking; the "cheese" is genuinely fresh curd.