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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake

A lemon-flavored cake layered with a lemon jelly topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 sugar and ½ cup butter. Add ¾ cup sweet milk, 6 egg whites, 3 cups flour, and 3 teaspoons baking powder. Mix well.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  4. 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 butter, and 1 cup sugar in a saucepan.

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

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the jelly between the layers of cake or on top of a square cake.

  2. 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift and structure, while egg yolks help the jelly thicken and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the cake and smoothness to the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and jelly and helps the cake brown.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright lemon aroma to the jelly.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon jelly over low heat. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so low heat and constant stirring let the mixture thicken smoothly into a set custard-like filling.

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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