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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake

A lemon-flavored cake with a jelly layer between or on top, made from sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together 2 cups of sugar and ½ cup of butter.

  3. Add ¾ cup of sweet milk, 6 egg whites, 3 cups of flour, and 3 teaspoons of baking powder; mix well.

Make the lemon jelly

  1. For the jelly, combine the grated rind and juice of 2 lemons, 3 egg yolks, ½ cup of butter, and 1 cup of sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the mixture on the stove until thick, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Assemble

  1. Use the lemon jelly between the cake layers or spread it on top of a baked square cake, then cut into diamond shapes.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 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

Egg whites
Whipped structure that helps the cake batter rise and hold its crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and thickening power to the lemon jelly as it cooks.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in both the batter and the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and jelly and helps brown the cake.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon jelly until thick. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating or leaving the mixture unstirred can scramble them or scorch the bottom. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the jelly sets smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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