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Lemon Cheesecakes

A lemon-flavored cheesecake made with butter, sugar, eggs, and a puff pastry crust.

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 Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon filling

  1. Dissolve the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the sugar, lemon zest, and lemon juice.

  3. Beat the eggs and mix them in.

  4. Stir continuously until the sugar dissolves and the mixture thickens to honey consistency.

Fill and bake

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

  2. Mix in some crushed biscuits or ratafias with the lemon mixture and fill the patty pans halfway.

  3. Bake for 30 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.

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. Butter + sugartop 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. Lemon + eggtop 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

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard as they cook, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.
Crushed loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken to a honey-like consistency when stirred.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that brightens the flavor and helps thicken the custard.

The step that matters

Stir continuously until the sugar dissolves and the mixture thickens. Constant stirring over gentle heat keeps the eggs from scrambling or curdling as they thicken, so the filling stays smooth rather than grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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