Cheesecake Day

What the day is

Cheesecake Day is observed on July 30. The dessert is a set custard of soft cheese, eggs and sugar, usually on a base of crumbs or pastry, and it exists in more national versions than almost any other sweet.

Origin and background

It is genuinely ancient. Cheese-based cakes were made in classical Greece, and a recipe survives in Roman agricultural writing, using fresh cheese, honey and flour baked on a base. The frequently repeated claim that cheesecake was served to athletes at the first Olympic Games is exactly that, a repeated claim, and worth treating as tradition rather than record.

The modern American version depends on an ingredient that did not exist until 1872, when a New York dairyman attempting to reproduce a French cheese produced something richer and fresher instead. Cream cheese was the result, and New York cheesecake, dense and tall and almost entirely cream cheese, is built on it.

Other traditions took different routes. Italian versions use ricotta, which bakes drier and grainier. German kasekuchen uses quark. Japanese souffle cheesecake folds in beaten egg white for something light enough to wobble. Basque burnt cheesecake, a recent arrival from San Sebastian, is deliberately overbaked at high heat until the top blackens and the center stays molten.

Nearly every difficulty with cheesecake is the same difficulty: it is a custard, and custards crack when they cook too fast or cool too quickly. Beating air into the batter makes it rise and then sink, and a hot oven sets the edges long before the center.

How to take part

• Bring everything to room temperature. Cold cream cheese will not smooth out and leaves lumps nothing can fix later.
• Beat slowly and stop as soon as it is combined. Air is the enemy of a dense cheesecake.
• Bake in a water bath at a low temperature, or accept a crack and cover it with fruit.
• Turn the oven off and leave the door ajar for an hour rather than pulling it straight out.
• Chill overnight. A warm cheesecake has not finished setting and tastes of very little.
• Try a Basque one if you want the opposite of all this advice, deliberately burnt and far easier.