Skip to main content
Dessert

Apple Cheesecakes

A baked apple cheesecake made with apple pulp, sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon.

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

Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Cheesecakes

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 the filling

  1. Cook 3 or 4 apples until soft.

  2. Mash the cooked apples and strain through a coarse sieve.

  3. Melt the butter.

  4. Mix the melted butter with grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and sugar.

  5. Combine the butter mixture with the apple pulp.

  6. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture and combine well.

Bake and serve

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the mixture.

  3. Bake for about 15 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Apple pulp
Provides the main body and moisture of the filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling as it sets in the oven.
Egg white
Helps the filling set and gives it a lighter structure.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Add the beaten eggs to the mixture and combine well. Eggs thicken when heated, so the filling must be evenly combined before baking to set smoothly rather than in patches.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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

You might also like

Apple PuddingApple Pudding256 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes