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Dessert

Lemon Cheesecakes

A lemon-flavored cheesecake made with butter, sugar, eggs, lemon rind, lemon juice, Savoy biscuit, almonds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lemon Cheesecakes

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.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter and sugar together gently.

  2. Add the egg yolks, egg white, lemon rind, lemon juice, crushed Savoy biscuit, and pounded almonds, then mix well until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into prepared pastry shells.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and white bind the filling and help it set firm when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that gives the cheesecake its bright, tart flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Pounded almonds
Add body, nutty flavour and a slightly grainy richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Egg proteins coagulate as they heat, so the filling sets firm. Underbaking leaves it runny, while overbaking can make it dry and cracked.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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