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Dessert

Lemon Cheese

A buttery pastry filled with a lemon and currant cheese mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Mix in the flour and sugar.

  3. Beat the eggs with honey water and milk, then add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the currants and lemon rind.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill puff pastry shells three-quarters full with the batter.

  2. Top with sliced almonds and sugar.

  3. Bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Honey + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + honeytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,327 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the batter richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firm when baked.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter bakes softly rather than dry.

The step that matters

Bake in a steady oven until golden. A steady, moderate oven lets the eggs and batter set through the centre while the surface browns evenly. Too hot a heat can brown the top before the inside sets, and too little heat can leave the filling wet and pale.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, egg, honey, milk, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, honey, milk, lemon. 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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