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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cakes

A small lemon-flavored cheese cake made with butter, egg yolks, almond flour, lemon juice, saccharine, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese Cakes

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.

Prepare

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

  2. Line patty tins with almond pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice and saccharine dissolved in 1 teaspoon of water.

  4. Add the almond flour and gently fold in the whipped egg whites.

Bake

  1. Spoon the mixture into each patty pan and bake for about 15 minutes.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, creamy texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the filling as it sets.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and help the filling rise and set.
Almond flour
Adds body and a nutty flavour to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the filling its lightness. Stirring them vigorously knocks out that air, so the cakes bake up denser and flatter.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, almond, 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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