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Dessert

Potato, or Lemon Cheesecakes

A cheesecake made with boiled potatoes, lemon peel, sugar, butter, and thick cream, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Potato, or Lemon Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the lemon peel and potatoes until tender.

  2. Bruise the potatoes and beat the lemon peel with the sugar.

Make the filling

  1. Mix all ingredients together well.

  2. Melt the butter in a little thick cream and combine with the mixture.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Fill and bake

  1. Place crust in patty pans and fill them a little more than half full.

  2. Sift refined sugar over the filled pans.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for half an hour.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. 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
Provide the bulk and moisture that give the filling a soft, thick body.
Lemon peel
Adds the bright, aromatic citrus flavour that defines the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the butter blend smoothly into the filling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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