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Apple Cheese Cakes

A puff pastry-lined apple cake with butter, sugar, eggs, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Simmer the minced apples in fresh butter and sugar until soft.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs, lemon rind, and lemon juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

  2. Fill them with the apple mixture.

  3. Bake 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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Soften into the filling and provide the main fruit flavor and moist body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it caramelize slightly during cooking.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set as it bakes.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp case that holds the apple mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer the apples until soft. Apples that stay firm will leave a chunky, uneven filling and may release water later. Cooking them fully softens the pieces and lets excess moisture evaporate before the eggs are added, so the filling sets smoothly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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