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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake

A lemon-flavored cake made with egg yolks, butter, sugar, and a mixture of egg whites, baking powder, milk, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, egg yolks, and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the sugar and mix until smooth.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Fold the egg whites into the lemon mixture gently.

  5. Incorporate the baking powder and sweet milk, then gradually add flour until the batter reaches a thick consistency.

Make the filling and bake

  1. Cook the mixture on the stove until it thickens like sponge, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Use this mixture as a jelly between cake layers.

  3. Bake it as a square cake and spread the mixture on top, cutting it 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. Lemon + milktop 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 to stiff peaks, they add airy lift to the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture become smooth.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter into a cake.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture on the stove. Heat thickens the mixture as it cooks, but it can scorch on the bottom of the pan and turn bitter. Stirring constantly over gentle heat keeps it smooth and prevents burning.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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