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Dessert

Lemon Patties

Lemon Patties are a baked dessert made with lemon rind, sugar, crumbled bread, milk, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Patties

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.

Prepare

  1. Rub the rind of a fresh lemon with the sugar until fragrant.

  2. Crush the sugar to powder and mix it with the crumbled bread.

  3. Pour the boiling milk over the mixture and soak for 30 minutes.

Make the patties

  1. Stir in the clarified butter and beaten eggs.

  2. Butter small cups and fill them more than halfway with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn the patties out onto a hot dish and serve with wine sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a tender, custard-like structure when baked.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb while helping the patties brown.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the patties and, rubbed with lemon rind, carries its fragrant oils.
Bread crumbs
Forms the body of the patties, soaking up milk to give a soft, moist texture.
Milk
Softens the crumbed bread and adds moisture so the mixture bakes tender.

The step that matters

Soak the bread in boiling milk. The bread must fully absorb the hot milk so the mixture bakes evenly and smoothly. Dry pockets can leave the patties crumbly or lumpy.

“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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