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Dessert

Lemon Cheesecakes

A lemon‑flavored cheesecake made with butter, sugar, eggs, and puff pastry, finished with lemon curd filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the lemon curd

  1. Combine butter, sugar, grated lemon rind, and strained lemon juice in a double saucepan; let them dissolve slowly.

  2. Whisk the yolks of 6 eggs and the whites of 2 eggs; add them slowly to the mixture while stirring continuously.

  3. Stir over low heat until the mixture thickens, then remove from heat.

Prepare and bake the shells

  1. Cut the puff pastry with a round cutter, scalloped at the edge, and use a smaller plain cutter to cut halfway through the center.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until done.

  3. Remove the center where it was cut and fill the hole with the lemon curd.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 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. Egg + lemontop 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
Yolks and whites thicken the lemon mixture into a set, creamy curd.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the curd and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the curd.
Lemons
Provide the juice and rind that give the curd its bright, acidic flavor.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp case that holds the lemon curd.

The step that matters

Stir the curd over low heat until it thickens. Egg proteins set as the curd heats, but too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps. Gentle, constant stirring over low heat keeps the curd smooth and thick.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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