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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cakes

A baked apple cake flavored with lemon, egg yolks, butter, and sugar, lined with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Lemon Cheese Cakes

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 ↓

Lemon Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Boil the apples in a small amount of water until soft.

  3. Mash the apples until very smooth.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice, grated peel, egg yolks, and softened butter.

  5. Sweeten the mixture with pounded loaf sugar to taste.

Bake

  1. Line patty pans with rich puff paste.

  2. Fill the lined pans with the apple mixture.

  3. Bake.

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

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 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
Cooked and mashed, they form the bulk and soft body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the mashed apple filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the rich filling.
Rich puff paste
Forms the buttery, flaky case that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Mash the apples until very smooth. Any lumps left in the cooked apple will stay in the filling and give an uneven texture once baked. Thorough mashing gives the smooth body the cakes need.

Swap the apple

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

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

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