Marmalade cheese cake: a 1914 pie recipe

Today's historical recipe comes to us courtesy of the Edmonds' "Sure to Rise" Cookery Book, 1914 edition.  It looked easy, required few ingredients, and I like marmalade, so I tried it.  Why it's called a cheese cake when there is no cheese in the ingredients list is unclear to me, but never mind.  Let's dive in.

MARMALADE CHEESE CAKES.

• 2 tablespoonfuls marmalade
• 2 eggs
• 2 ozs. butter

Melt the butter, beat the eggs, and add to marmalade. Line patty pans with puff paste (see recipe page 18), pour in the mixture, and bake in a quick oven.

I made one large pie instead of several small ones, and chose not to use the puff paste recipe on page 18 for several reasons.  Firstly, because I am unapologetically lazy when it comes to pastry.  Secondly, because the supermarket's ready-made puff pastry is much better than anything I’d be able to make, and thirdly, because if you do navigate to page 18 and check out that recipe, you’ll see it has baking powder in it.  Understandable in a book produced as a marketing tool to sell Edmonds' brand baking powder, but that’s not how you make puff pastry and I am suspicious.

Made with store-bought pastry, the "cheese cake" looked pretty good.  Sadly, looks can be deceiving.  I was hoping for something with a custard-like filling here, but what I got instead was a kind of marmalade quiche.  It doesn't taste bad, but it isn't amazing either.  If you like quiche and want to try a sweet one, this might be something you'll enjoy, but in all honesty I can't recommend it.  It's edible and it isn't horrible or anything, but I wouldn't serve it to guests.  Perhaps I was disappointed because our tastes in food have changed over the past 100 years, or because we expect more out of our desserts these days, or maybe this just wasn't a top tier recipe by 1914 standards.  I suspect all of the above.

If you're a fan of car-crash cookery, be sure to check out the "Sure to Rise" recipe for "tomato and macaroni", a weird parody of lasagne which consists of tomato, macaroni, and onion (and nothing else) layered in a casserole dish and baked.