welcome friends it is Sunday morning so we're going to do another one of our
sort of depression-era recipes and today we're going to look at one from the
Chicago Daily News cookbook published in 1930 and we're gonna make something
called cheese custard and I've never made anything like this before but
looking at the recipe it kind of strikes me as being an early cheesecake or a
cheesecake variation so the first thing I've got is some cottage cheese and it
says to press it through a fine mesh strainer so I guess you're just trying
to break up all the curds and get something that's really nice and smooth
okay so there's a point in most recipes where I think is this really necessary
then I wonder if this step is super necessary I guess we'll find out in the
end
took a bit of work to get this to happen now the next step says the gratings of
one lemon so using a microplane and it goes next we put in sugar flour pinch of
salt and four egg yolks I've got the egg whites here we're going to beat them
separately put that in and give it all a mix combine it well okay this is all
mixed together now I need to whip egg whites and I also need to whip whipped
cream and then fold it into this mixture now this jug was great for the initial
stages especially when I was trying to get the cottage cheese through the sieve
but I think I'll move that to a bigger bowl in order to fold this stuff in so
I've got the four egg whites I need to whip those to stiff peaks
now cream it just says to put in a bottle of cream that you whip stiffly
now what size bottle of cream it doesn't go into that and I I'm having a little
bit of a struggle here trying to figure out whether it's a half pint bottle or a
full pint bottle but both of which would have been used in Chicago in the 1930s
to hold cream I'm gonna try what is the equivalent of a half pint and we'll see
what happens we'll see if it works out flying blind again not enough
instructions in the recipe to really to really know what's going on and I guess
in the 1930s if it said to use a bottle of cream you would have known which size
bottle to use maybe now since both of these are going to be cooked together
whip the egg whites first with clean beaters and then you can use the same
beaters in the cream to whip it and if you don't want to do that you can of
course always clean the beaters or have a second set of beaters I can go just
straight over okay looking good so now it just says to add the whipped cream
and stiffly beaten egg whites so I'm going to move the first mixture to a
better bowl for mixing it doesn't say and they were folding or being careful I
guess that's just understood you need to be careful when you're putting these
things together the cream will go in first because it's not going to deflate
as badly as the egg whites might and I think you can just stir the whipped
cream in completely all at once still be careful though
okay now I'm gonna fold the egg whites in a third at a time so I put the first
third in and the first third you don't have to be terribly careful with just
sort of get them incorporated and then you do a third and third folding trying
to be fairly careful now a pastry chef once told me that most people have a
difficult time with this operation because they over beat the egg whites
and they're too stiff and that stiff peaks probably isn't where you should be
in order to fold in egg whites and I would probably count myself in that
group of people who over beats the egg whites and then has difficulty folding
them in so now it says to transfer to a buttered baking dish doesn't say what
kind or how or how it's supposed to be served so I'm just going to assume that
this buttered baking dish will be fine and transfer this in and then you bake
it in a hot oven for ten minutes and then you turn it to a low oven and cook
it slowly for an hour so let's get this going
okay Jules hey that is one golden looking it is very golden it's called
the cheese custard but she's custard hmm okay so I'm assuming it has eggs milk
cheese eggs milk cottage cheese
something I've never had before something and I initially say I bet it
will be great with some lemon um there is lemon in it yeah there you go so yeah
so it's it's kind of a it's a it's kind of a cross between a baked custard that
I'm accustomed to cheesecake yeah it's certainly not something that I
would have had as a child or my grandparents would have ever made or my
mom and would have ever made someone clearly did someone did I guess this is
more of an American thing hmm okay it's got a corn Brittany kind of
texture to it yeah that caramel layer on top almost has that cornbread crunch
doesn't huh the lemon really pulls out great flavor I wonder if it would be
doesn't need to be cold hmm no it's just slightly warm now mm-hmm it
would be good cold it would be good warm um would be good cold with a dollop of
ice cream mm-hmm I think there's a lot of options
it tastes similar to me two years ago on the channel we did a ricotta cheesecake
and if I remember I'll put the link below but you can go to our Channel and
just google ricotta cheesecake it's got the same sort of texture as that I think
would also be really good with little cardamom cardamom yes you could put all
kinds of different spicing into I could really you know yeah go with your your
bias and I've already eaten most of mine so but at the C at the same time it's a
pretty good little dessert I'm gonna say at the same time it's a great dessert
yeah and obviously we're probably eating way more than would have been served in
the 1930s thanks for stopping by see you again I can't talk I'm just I'm
just gonna keep you gonna keep you doing cuz I really enjoy it okay so I'll see
you again soon
you