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Dessert

Apple Cheesecakes

A pastry dessert with stewed apples, sugar, lemon rind, water, butter, and eggs baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and tea work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 610 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Apple Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the apples with sugar, lemon rind, and water until soft.

  2. In a bowl, mix the melted butter and beaten eggs thoroughly.

  3. Combine the apple mixture with the butter and egg mixture.

Bake

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry and fill with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

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. Lemon + teatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Apple + teatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and its soft, sweet body once stewed.
Eggs
Set the filling as they cook, giving it a firm, custard-like structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Thoroughly combining the butter and eggs. If the eggs are not beaten and mixed fully into the melted butter, the filling can separate or bake unevenly. Blending them well gives a smooth, uniform set.

Swap the apple

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, tea, butter, egg. 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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