Cheese Cake
1 cup milk Pinch of salt 3/4 cup sugar 1 tablespoon cornstarch 2 eggs 1 cake cottage cheese Scald the milk; add the sugar, salt and cornstarch dissolved in a little cold milk. Stir over hot water until the mixture thickens; then add the beaten eggs and last the cheese cake, mixed with a little extra milk. Line one pie plate or a number of small patty pans with paste; fill with the mixture and bake until the cheese custard is firm.
A cooked-custard cheesecake in a pastry shell, closer to a Continental Käsekuchen or a custard pie than to the cream-cheese-and-crumb version. The whole dish hinges on cooking the base gently and not letting the eggs set before they go into the shell.
- "1 cake cottage cheese"Cottage cheese was once sold pressed and drained in a small block or "cake." Figure on about 8 oz, roughly a cup of dry-curd or well-drained small-curd cheese. Modern tubs are much wetter; drain in a sieve, and if you want a smooth custard rather than a curdy one, press the cheese through the sieve or blitz it briefly.
- "the cheese cake"The second mention of "cheese cake" in the method means the cake of cheese, not the finished dessert. Thin it with a few spoonfuls of milk so it folds in without lumps.
- Over hot waterA double boiler, or a bowl set over a pan of simmering water; the indirect heat reduces the risk of scorching a cornstarch custard, which can catch and taste pasty over direct heat. Stir until the mixture has visibly thickened.
- Adding the eggsBeat the eggs, then stir a ladle of the hot thickened milk into them before returning the lot to the pan, or they will scramble in streaks. Once the eggs are in, the mixture only needs to be warmed through; the oven finishes it.
- "Paste"Pastry; a plain short paste suits this filling, though the original does not specify which kind. A single 9-inch shell, or the "number of small patty pans" (tartlet tins) the recipe allows. Since the filling is already thick and warm, a partly blind-baked shell keeps the bottom from going soggy.
- Oven and donenessThe original gives no temperature. A moderate oven, in the region of 325-350F, until the center is just barely wobbly; if you want to set the pastry first, begin hotter for the first ten minutes or so. Patty pans will be done well before a full pie. "Firm" is worth reading cautiously: an egg custard taken much beyond roughly 180F tends to weep, though the cornstarch here offers some protection.
- Yield and servingOne 9-inch pie, six to eight slices. Cool completely before cutting; the cornstarch and eggs both continue to set as it comes down to room temperature. Good plain, or with cinnamon or a little lemon rind beaten into the cheese.
Cottage cheese tarts of this kind traveled to America with German, Dutch and Central European households, where a fresh curd cheese baked into pastry was ordinary home cooking long before commercial cream cheese existed. The tell here is the pressed "cake" of cheese, a form in which fresh curd was commonly sold or made at home from clabbered milk in the early twentieth century, and the cornstarch, which does the work of stabilizing the custard. The recipe reflects older usage in which "cheesecake" named a small pastry filled with sweetened curd; the word is recorded in English cookery for centuries before anything resembling the modern chilled cheesecake appeared.