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Cheesecake
Cheesecake is a traditional Stuart period recipe for what we would recognise today as a cheesecake. Though this is made in a pastry shell rather than having a biscuit crumb base as modern cheesecakes would. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Stuart version of Cheesecake.
prep time
20 minutes
cook time
80 minutes
Total Time:
100 minutes
Additional Time:
(+cooling)
Serves:
6
Rating: 
Tags : Cheese RecipesBaking RecipesCake RecipesBritish Recipes
Original Recipe
This recipe is derived from Kenelm Digby's
The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened. This was published by a close servant, but based on Digby's notes in 1669 some 150 years after the term 'cheesecake' entered English.
To Make Cheeſe-Cakes:
(from Digby)
Take tewlve quarts of Milk warm from the Cow, turn it with a good ſpoonful of Runnet, break it well, and put it in a large ſtrainer, in which rowl it up and down, that all the whey may run out into a little tub; when all that will is run out, wring out more. Then break the curds well, then wring it again, and more whey will come. Thus break and wring till no more come. Then work the curds exceedingly with your hand in a tray, till they become a ſhort uniform paſte. Then put to it the yolks of eight new laid eggs, and two whites, and a pound of butter. Work all this long together. In the long working (at the ſeveral times) conſiſteth the making them good. Then ſeaſon them to your taſte with Sugar finely beaten; and put in ſome Cloves and Mace in ſubtile powder. Then lay them thick in coffins of fine paſte and bake them.
Use my
home-made ricotta cheese recipe if you want to prepare your own.
Modern Redaction
Ingredients:
1kg creamed cottage cheese (or ricotta)
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
225g butter
115g sugar
¼ tsp each of cloves and
mace
2×22cm pie crust shell (use either the
short-crust or the
standard pie-crust recipe)
Method:
Based on the original recipe, 12 quarts of milk (13.5l) would yield somewhere around 2kg of cottage cheese. Taking this as a guide and halving the ingredients yields the recipe above). It is also assumed that Elizabethan eggs were probably smaller than modern large eggs.
After you have made your pie crust (use either the short-crust for an expensive pie or the standard pie-crust recipes) place in a 22cm pie dish, add dried beans to keep the bottom flat and blind bake in an oven at 170°C (150°C fan/325°F/Gas Mark 3) for ten minutes.
Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan. Whilst it is melting, beat the eggs and yolk together and stir into the cheese. Fold in the other ingredients and then stir-in the molten butter. Pour this mixture into a pie base and bake the tart in an oven at 170°C (150°C fan/325°F/Gas Mark 3) for about 70 minutes or until the surface turns a golden brown.
Allow the cheesecake to cool for an hour and serve.
