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Dessert

Cheese Torte

A baked dessert made with cottage cheese, sugar, lemon, eggs, and butter, topped with cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cheese Torte

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the cottage cheese, heavy cream, and melted butter; beat until very light.

  2. Add the sugar and the beaten egg yolks; mix well.

  3. Stir in the flour and lemon zest and juice.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the cheese mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a well‑buttered and floured springform pan.

  2. Sprinkle the top with cinnamon and bake for 45 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped to stiff peaks, give the torte its light, airy lift.
Cottage cheese
Forms the main body of the torte, giving it a dense, creamy texture once baked.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the cheese mixture smooth and tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give the baked top a light golden color.
Flour
Adds a small amount of structure so the torte holds its shape after baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and greasing the pan helps the torte release.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites trap air that gives the torte its lift. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing and leaving a dense result.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, sugar, cream, egg, flour, butter, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, sugar, cream, egg, flour, butter, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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