Name: English Cheese Cakes
Ingredients: 6 ounces potatoes; peel of 4 lemons; ¼ pound sugar; ¼ pound butter; a little cream or milk; 1 egg; Zante currants; rich pastry for lining

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

English Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Boil potatoes and lemon peel together until tender.
Beat the lemon peel with sugar.
Mash the potatoes with butter and cream or milk mixed with the beaten egg.
Combine all ingredients and add cleaned Zante currants.

Bake and serve

Line patty pans with pastry and fill with the mixture.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Sift sugar over them.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes: Give the filling a soft, moist body that holds the other ingredients together.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, smoother texture.
Egg: Binds the mixture and helps it set as it bakes.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Lemon peel: Adds bright citrus aroma and flavour to the filling.

Swap the currant

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

Vanillafits better
Orangefits better
Coconutfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, lemon, sugar, butter, cream, 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.