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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cakes

A lemon-flavored cheesecake made from stale sponge cakes, butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice and rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Lemon Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Powder the sponge cakes and beat in the lemon juice and rind with sugar.

  2. Melt the butter and add it to the mixture, simmering for a few moments.

  3. Gradually add the beaten eggs, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Bake in puff pastry shells.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sponge cakes
Forms the bulk of the filling and soaks up the liquid to give it body.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, smoother texture.
Eggs
Set when baked, binding the mixture so it holds together as a custard-like filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Gradually add the beaten eggs, mixing well. Adding the eggs slowly and mixing thoroughly spreads them evenly through the mixture. Eggs added in a rush can form lumps, and an uneven distribution makes the filling set unevenly when baked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg. 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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