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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake

A no-bake lemon cheesecake made by simmering sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon juice until thick, then stored in a jar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon curd

  1. In a pan, combine the sugar, butter, egg yolks, egg whites, lemon juice, and grated lemon peel.

  2. Simmer over low heat, stirring gently in one direction until the sugar dissolves. Continue to stir gently to prevent curdling.

  3. Simmer until the mixture thickens and resembles honey.

Store

  1. Store in a jar like mince meat.

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 + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 yolks
Thicken the mixture as they heat and set, giving the curd its richness.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness, helping the curd set as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the curd a silky texture.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the curd and helps it thicken into a spreadable consistency.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low and keep stirring. Eggs curdle if they get too hot or are left still. Gentle, constant stirring over low heat lets the mixture thicken smoothly without scrambling the eggs.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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