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Lemon Cheesecake Mixture

A mixture of butter, lemon, sugar, and egg yolks for making lemon cheesecake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Cheesecake Mixture

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sugar

  1. Rub sugar on lemon rind.

  2. Pound the sugar.

Make the mixture

  1. Place the sugar in a pan with the strained lemon juice and butter.

  2. Stir together for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar.

  3. Add the egg yolks and stir over low heat until it begins to boil.

  4. Strain the mixture and keep it in a covered jar.

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. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as their proteins set with gentle heat, giving a creamy body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and bright lemon flavor that balances the sugar.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves into the liquid to give a smooth result.
Lemon rind
Rubbing sugar on the rind draws out aromatic lemon oils into the sugar.

The step that matters

Keep the heat low once the yolks go in. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Stir constantly and stop as soon as the mixture begins to boil.

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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