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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake

A lemon-flavored cake with a sweet lemon filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 Cake

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk and lemon extract.

  5. In another bowl, combine the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt.

  6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine 1 cup of sugar, 2 tablespoons of butter, 1 egg, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of the cooled cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine-textured crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and become light.
Cornstarch
Softens the flour's gluten, producing a more delicate, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. The egg and sugar mixture must be stirred constantly over medium heat. Egg proteins set as they heat, so without constant stirring the filling can scramble or curdle before it thickens smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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