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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake

A lemon-flavored cake with a lemon jelly layer or topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of butter. Add ¾ cup of sweet milk and the 6 egg whites, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add 3 cups of flour and 3 teaspoons of baking powder, stirring until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Make the lemon jelly

  1. For the jelly, combine the grated rind and juice of 2 lemons, 3 egg yolks, ½ cup of butter, and 1 cup of sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Assemble and serve

  1. Use the lemon jelly between layers of cake or spread on top of a square cake, then cut into diamond shapes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Egg whites add lift and structure to the cake, while egg yolks thicken the lemon jelly.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to both the cake and the lemon jelly.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and jelly and helps browning and a tender crumb.
Lemons
Provide the bright acidity and aroma that flavour the lemon jelly.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon jelly over low heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so cooking gently over low heat while stirring constantly thickens the mixture smoothly and prevents it from burning on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, flour. 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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