Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cakes

A lemon cheese cake baked in pastry-lined patty pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Press the cottage cheese through a ricer.

  2. Add sugar, lemon rind, lemon juice, and beaten eggs to the cheese, then mix thoroughly.

Bake

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

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 15 minutes or until the pastry is baked and the mixture is thickened.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Cottage cheese + vanillatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together107 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Cottage cheese + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cottage cheese
Forms the creamy body of the filling once pressed smooth and set by heat.
Eggs
Coagulate in the oven to thicken the filling and give it structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cut through the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Bake until the mixture is thickened. Egg proteins set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it curdle or turn grainy and dry. Check that the centre has thickened and the pastry is golden.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cottage cheese, sugar, egg, vanilla):

  1. Pineapplefits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, sugar, egg, vanilla. 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.

More lemon cheesecake recipes

Pudding 3 See all 96 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes