Cheese-Cake 1714
Recently I’ve begun writing a romance set in the Georgian Period, which includes but starts a century before the popular Regency Period. I’m working on the book slowly as part of the Tuesday Tales blogging group, where we write snippets to word and picture prompts. This goes well with my fascination with old recipes, commonly called receipts back then. In fact, I can remember my old Granny calling them receipts. Google Books makes available an array of historical and vintage cookbooks. Most of them cover everything a chatelaine or housewife should know, from cooking food for the family to preparing medicinal treatments for ordinary to dire ailments. Cheesecake is my son’s favorite, and below is a receipt from a 1714 cookbook. A couple of the cheesecake receipts stymied me, in that they listed no form of cheese or curd. So why were they called cheesecake? I’ll research that more later and let you know. The receipt I’m sharing with you for your interest today, however, does include curd.
From A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physic, and Surgery by Mary Kettilby 1714, free on Google Books
A Good Cheese-Cake, with Curd
To a pound and half of cheese curd, put ten ounces of butter, beat both in a mortar, til all looks like butter; then add a quarter of a pound of almonds, beat with orange-flower-water, a pound of sugar, eight eggs, half the whites, a little beaten mace, and a little cream, beat all together: A quarter of an hour bakes them in puff-crust, and in a quick oven.
These vintage recipes or receipts, including this 1714 one for cheesecake, are amazing to me. There was a lot of beating and pounding going on. No wonder butter, sugar, and other ingredients were measured by the pound <smile>. Hats off to all those women back then, our energetic and inventive foremothers. On his 
birthday each year, my daughter-in-law makes my son a sinfully delicious reese cup cheesecake. If you would like the recipe, let me know. What kind of cheesecake is your favorite?
Cheers & Happy Reading!
Flossie Benton Rogers, Conjuring the Magic with Romance
I never knew recipes were originally called receipts. How intriguing. I wonder when the change took place? I tend to like cheesecake plain when I eat it with just a drizzle of cherries on top. My husband, on the other hand prefers the decadent kind with chocolate mixed in. 🙂
To be honest cheesecake is not something I drool over. I won’t necessarily turn it down though 🙂
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you, Vikki!
Very interesting. I like the plain New York kind sometimes with strawberry and I love anything chocolate
I also prefer plain, Cathy, and chocolate is great too.
Cheesecake is one of my greatest weaknesses! I went to Texas to see my aunts and had cheesecake that was so delicious. They mailed me one packed in ice packs all the way to Utah. 🙂
We all have something that completely sends us in orbit, and cheesecake is a mouthwatering one, Cindy. Mine is Boston cream pie. How sweet of your aunts to send you home with that cheesecake!
Oh, I am not at all familiar with this type of cake. For me cheese cake means either pastry that has cheese between the sheets or cakes/pies made of dough layers with cheese as filling. They are delicious and are different from what is traditional in USA, But I am sure your recipe is as delicious as the ones I am telling you about.
I am fascinated by your type of cheese cake, Carmen. I’ve seen the pictures, and it looks absolutely delicious.