Chicago-Style Cheesecake (I think)

The hell with it, we're making cheesecake.

Chicago-style Cheesecake        Crust: 6 oz (about 1⅔ cups) graham cracker crumbs* 2 tbsp butter 2 tbsp sugar Pinch of salt (if butter is unsalted)        Filling: 1 cup sugar 1 pound cream cheese 2 tbsp flour Pinch of salt 1 tsp vanilla 4 eggs, separated 1 cup cream        To make the crust: Cream the butter and sugar. Mix in the crumbs. This is easiest with your hands or with an electric mixer, instead of with a spoon. Press the crumbs into the bottom of a deep springform pan. If you don't have one, you can use a 9" square pan or a very large cast-iron skillet.        To make the filling: Beat the sugar and cream cheese until well creamed. Add flour and salt, beat in thoroughly. Add the vanilla and egg yolks, mix well. Then mix in the cream. Beat the egg whites until almost-but-not-quite stiff peaks form. Then fold them into the batter. Pour the batter into the pan and bake at least one hour. It is done when the center springs back when lightly pressed with the finger. *The original recipe calls for crushed zwieback crackers, but those are surprisingly hard to find these days. Unless you really want to be period-correct, graham crackers will be just fine. Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

Note: If you want to lift the whole cheesecake out of the pan before serving it, cut a piece of cardboard to fit the bottom of the pan. Make sure there aren't any big gaps when you press it into the pan, but it shouldn't fit snugly either. You're going to want to easily lift it out after baking. Wrap the cardboard in foil. Next, cut two wide strips of parchment paper (say, 2 or so inches), that are long enough to lay across the pan and stick out a little over each side. Grease the pan. Then lay the paper strips crosswise across it so they cross in the center. You want both ends of each strip to stick out over the edge of the pan. Then put the cardboard into the pan on top of the paper. You now have a pan with four paper tabs poking up from the cardboard you put on the bottom. Put the crust mixture on top of the cardboard, and proceed with the recipe. After you have the batter on top of the crust, you should have four paper tabs sticking up from the edges of the pan. After baking the cheesecake and then refrigerating it until it's completely chilled, cut around the edge of the pan to free the cake, being sure to cut between the paper and the cheesecake. Then lift the cheesecake by the paper tabs. You can now set it on whatever serving platter you like. You could use just one paper strip instead of two. But I recommend using two paper strips, which gives you a backup in case one of them rips.

As the tariff-mongering and other ethical disasters from the alleged president threaten to make food even more expensive, I decided to indulge while we still can. 

I should note that this cheesecake is brought to you by my grandmother, who decided to send each of her grandchildren a surprise check. I should also note that when I called her to say thank you and told her that I had used part of her gift on cream cheese, she asked "Are you going to save me any?"  

Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive

The original recipe calls for "1 package zwieback" to make the crust, so I assumed they were a standard size. Just to see what turned up, I did an image search for "1930s zwieback package." I found a surprising number of pictures of really old cracker boxes. All of them were six ounces, regardless of brand.

I didn't think I'd find 90-year-old food packaging sizes so easily. As I was making a note on my recipe printout so I wouldn't have to look this up again, I started thinking about how the "Information Age" isn't going as well as we thought it would in the 1990s. Facts may be at our fingertips, but people still believe in alpha males, "great replacement theories," and other nonsense. 

But enough about current events, let's get down to cheesecake. Even if you set aside the lavish use of eggs, this is one of the more extravagant recipes in this book, and that includes the "Quick Caviar Canapes" on page seven. I guess even in the 1930s, you ignored your grocery budget if you wanted a cheesecake.

The last time we made a cheesecake recipe from Chicago, it was unpleasantly fluffy. Everyone who tried it agreed that it was a lot better before we baked it. But it got me wondering about "Chicago-style cheesecake," which apparently is a real thing. I don't know if today's recipe is in fact "Chicago-style cheesecake," but it is a cheesecake recipe printed in Chicago.

As with so many cheesecakes, we start with a crumb crust. But unusually, the recipe tells us to cream the butter and sugar instead of melting them and then mashing in the crumbs. This seemed silly until I realized that you couldn't simply pop your butter in the microwave in 1933. So really, Mrs. Mary Martensen is sparing us the bother of putting a saucepan on the stove and then having to wash it later.

Actually, that picture is a bit misleading. We're using a lot more crumbs than that little pile of them. I wondered if the butter would manage to coat them all.

At first, I worried that the mixer would ruin the crackers. Then I remembered that they were supposed to be pulverized anyway.

Distributing the butter among the crumbs might have taken a while if you couldn't afford a mixer at 1930s prices (seriously, people had to buy them on installment). But since we live in an era when you can get power tools at thrift shops, this was the fastest graham cracker crust I've ever made. The crumbs looked just as dry after mixing, but then I figured the butter would melt as it baked.

And now we must make a brief construction detour. Since I wanted to be extra-fancy and serve the cheesecake on a platter, I needed to be able to lift it out of the pan intact. With that in mind, I put some handle-straps into place.

Then, I put in a foil-wrapped cardboard circle on which the cheesecake could rest.

After all that prepwork, I pressed in the crust and saw that the cheesecake would never fit. I would say that all my efforts were pointless, but they did let me find out my pan was inadequate before it was too late. Also, since this recipe uses a crumb crust, I just had to dump it back into the mixing bowl. I didn't have to carefully lift a sheet of pie dough without ripping it.

 

As I was rummaging for something better, I wanted to use the big, extra-deep square pan that I usually use for casseroles. Unfortunately, I sent a friend home with a cake in that pan a while ago. And after delivering many unsolicited rants about how much I hate people who give away food and then want their stupid containers back (I didn't use the word "stupid"), I can't bring myself to ask him to wash and return it. I ended up getting out the big skillet for the purpose. I cannot overstate how weird it felt to put a cheesecake in cast iron, but there was no other way.

 

Look how roomy the pan is! Surely I could fit an entire cheesecake in here. And since it takes so long for heat to penetrate heavy iron, I optimistically hoped that it would be like those  bands that people soak in cold water and wrap around pans to keep the edges of a cake from overcooking before the center is done.

Anyway, now that the pan was ready, things started to look like a normal cheesecake recipe.

But then, disaster struck! Instead of adding salt to the batter, I added garlic powder!

Behold the ruination.

The garlic was still on the counter from making dinner, and all the shakers look the same. But fortunately, I had turned off the mixer instead of adding everything while the bowl spun around. I got a spoon and tried to save the cheesecake.

Eventually, I had to accept that I had removed all the garlic I could see. I had to either move on with the recipe or dump everything down the sink and start over. And starting over would have required going back to the grocery store. I would spend the rest of the recipe worrying about escaped garlic granules.

Garlic or not, it was time to add the eggs. The recipe says the yolks and whites should be "beaten separately," but I figured the yolks would be very well beaten by the time they got mixed in with everything else.

Also, since I didn't beat the yolks beforehand, we left nothing behind in the bowl! Even before eggs became a status symbol, I hated wasting them. These days, the thought of rinsing eggs away with the rest of the dirty dishes makes me sick.

No egg left behind!

At this point, we are directed to add a LOT of cream. Even in the days before homogenization, you couldn't just pour off the top milk to make this recipe. You had to go to the local grocery and purchase a half-pint for the express purpose. But if you were willing to put an entire pound of cream cheese into a single dessert, adding a whole bottle of cream probably wouldn't faze you as the clerk tallied the bill.

Our nearly-finished batter was yellower than I expected. Also, I kept tasting it to see if there was any garlic left. I couldn't decide if I was imagining garlic, or if a few ruinous granules had escaped. 

 

And now, we get to what really interested me in this recipe: fluffing it with whipped egg whites. Who the heck does this to a cheesecake? And how does it change the cake?

The recipe just tells us to use "a baking dish," and I would love to know what size Mrs. Mary Martensen had in mind. I put in as much batter as the skillet could take, leaving barely enough headspace to keep it from sloshing out while I carefully transferred it to the oven. In case you're wondering, the extra batter was like cheesecake-flavored whipped cream.

The directions say to bake this "an hour or more." I don't like running the oven for such long times now that the temperatures have warmed up. To eliminate guilt and get the most out of the oven heat, I deliberately planned a whole dinner that could be baked at 325°. But after I congratulated myself for economically loading up the oven, I realized that our supper was loaded with garlic that might infuse everything else in there. Who would have thought I would have such a hard time keeping garlic out of dessert?

 The cheesecake gradually puffed as it baked. By the time it was done, it looked like a big muffin.

 

I left the cheesecake on top of the stove to cool off. When I returned to the kitchen a bit later, I found--- horrors!--- that the cheesecake had cracked.

I'm not sure why people get so angsty about cracked cheesecakes. Unless you work at a restaurant and need picture-perfect slices for every paying customer, cracks don't hurt a thing. And if you're putting fruit filling on top, it seeps into the cracks and makes everything taste even better.

Cracks aside, I wasn't sure this would come out of the pan in one piece. Even though I had greased the pan before pouring in the batter, the cake clung to the sides. And it wanted to fall apart every time I looked at it. It is true that cheesecakes are always fragile while they're still hot. But even after this one came down to room temperature, it still seemed like it would rip apart if I disturbed it.

I decided to let that problem wait until the cheesecake had chilled for a night. Refrigerating a fully-loaded cast iron skillet felt wrong in a way I cannot describe. 

And so, after one long night of waiting, it was finally time to liberate the cheesecake! This is when all of this business with box cutters, old cardboard, and paper strips pays off. After cutting around the edge, the entire cheesecake lifted effortlessly out of the pan in two seconds. Sure, it left a lot behind in the pan that I had to scrape out. But if you can get a cake out of the pan in one piece, you have succeeded.

This cake was too big to put on a dinner plate, so I had to temporarily steal the glass platter from the microwave. As a serving note, baking the cheesecake on cardboard makes cutting easier. When the cheesecake tries to slide across the plate, you can put a finger against the cardboard instead of poking the dessert.

Just as I hoped, the graham cracker crust was no longer a dry crumbly mess after baking. Even if you tipped a slice on its side, almost nothing fell off. The crumbs were also a lot more compressed after baking. I guess spending over an hour in the oven under the weight of a cheesecake did more than I could have by patting it down.

Getting to the cheesecake itself: those whipped egg whites at the end really paid off. This thing is dangerously light and fluffy. You don't realize just how much you've eaten. And it tastes really, really, deliriously good. If the price of cream cheese holds steady, I'll have to remake this and see if letting it cool in the oven with the door slightly open prevents cracks. Not because I want another cheesecake, of course. I just need to thoroughly test the recipe.

I delivered a big hunk of it to my grandmother (naturally, in a container I didn't want back). A few days later I got a call saying it was "The best! Cheesecake! I have ever tasted!" I was also told "Don't ruin it with cherries on top!" Later, when I was on the phone with Mom, she said "They won't stop talking about that cheesecake! You're going to have to make another one!" 

It's nice to know that the cream cheese was a wise purchase.