Subject: Re: Want to know history of cheesecake

From: "David Herron" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 May 1993 19:36:19 GMT

I have read numerous recipes for cheesecake like dishes, but do not know
when it was preferred to use `cream cheese' and lemon and merangue.

In _The_Closet_of_Sir_Kenelm_Digby_... is a cheesecake recipe (labeled
as such).  It has you make your own cheese, starting from freshly gotten
milk.  But any `young' cheese should do.  This one was spiced with nutmeg
and mint.  This is an collection of English recipes published in
the late 1600's.

Off the top of my head I can't think of earlier recipes which were _called_
cheese cake.  However there are numerous recipes using cheese+eggs+flavoring
in some combination.  Many are more like what we calle Quiche nowadays.
There are trade offs in the ratio of cheese to egg, they produce different
effects.  And the kind of flavoring is another trade off which produces
different effects.

If you have access to old cookbooks then looking under cheese pie, or torta,
etc will give you a start.

	David

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From: [email-masked] (John Wexler)
Date: 26 May 93 20:08:24 GMT

This interests me too. Until the mid sixties, cheesecake "as we know it"
was practically unknown in Britain, and cheesecake of any kind was not
common.  We bought cheesecake in delicatessens, which were themselves a
novelty.  The available cheesecake was baked, solid, highly flavoured and
pungent with strong cheese, often with sultanas in the mix and a lattice
of pastry over the filling.  I associate this with Jewish baking, and it
seems to me to have only a very loose connection with what I later met under the
name of "American cheesecake".  So I'd like to know: did one evolve from
the other, or are they simply an instance of convergent evolution?
    John Wexler
    Edinburgh
P.S. I've got recipes for approximations to the old-style cheesecake
which I used to enjoy.  They all come out delicious, but sweeter and
lighter than I remember.  Has anybody got a recipe for the stuff that
makes the sweat stand out on your brow and fills you up with a half-inch
slice?