A cake or tart of light pastry, orig. containing cheese; now filled with a yellow butter-like compound of milk-curds, sugar, and butter, or a preparation of whipped egg and sugar.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 73. Chesekake, ortacius.
1530. Palsgr., 204/2. Chese cake, gasteav, torteav.
1588. Marprel. Epist. (Arb.), 40. The dogg flies at the B[ishop] and took of his corner capp (he thought belike it had bene a cheese cake).
1611. Cotgr., Talmouse, a Cheese-cake; a Tart made of egges, and cheese.
1667. Pepys, Diary, 11 Aug. We … eat some of the best cheese-cakes that ever I eat in my life.
1708. Motteux, Rabelais, IV. xxx. (1737), 125. Like three corner’d Cheese-Cakes.
1796. Mrs. Glasse, Cookery, xxi. 318. This we call saffron cheesecakes; the other, without currants, almond cheesecakes.
1853. Soyer, Pantroph., 292. A sort of cheese-cake, made of cheese, eggs, and butter.
b. attrib.
1644. Pol. Ballads (1860), I. 15. Your [Laud’s] cheese-cake cap and magpie gown.
a. 1718. Prior, Alma, III. Effeminate he sat, and quiet; Strange product of a cheese-cake diet.
1741. Lady Pomfret, Corr. w. C’tess Hartford, III. 232. Not sculking like a modern hero in a cheescake house.
1788. Marshall, E. Yorksh. Gloss. (E. D. S.), Cheese-cake-grass, Lotus corniculatus, birds-foot trefoil.
1876. Robinson, Whitby Gloss. (E. D. S.).
