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Dessert

Potato Cheesecakes

A baked dessert made with boiled potatoes, sugar, lemon rind, clarified butter, eggs, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato Cheesecakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Rub the sugar on the lemon rind until the yellow part is removed, then crush it to powder.

  2. Mix the crushed sugar with the boiled potatoes, clarified butter, and yolks of the eggs. Beat the mixture thoroughly and fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry and fill them halfway with the mixture. Bake in a well-heated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the filling and set it, while beaten whites add lightness and structure.
Boiled potatoes
Starchy, floury potato adds body and a tender, moist texture to the filling.
Clarified butter
Fat adds richness and a tender crumb to the filling.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to firm froth, and folding gently keeps that air in the mixture. Deflating it makes the filling dense instead of light.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, 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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