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Dessert

Potato Cheese-cakes

A baked pastry filled with a mixture of boiled potatoes, lemon peel, sugar, butter, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Cheese-cakes

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 filling

  1. Boil the potatoes and lemon peel until tender.

  2. In a mortar, beat the boiled lemon peel with the sugar.

  3. In a bowl, beat the potatoes with the melted butter and a little cream.

  4. Mix all ingredients well and let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line patty pans with puff pastry and half fill them with the mixture.

  3. Sift pounded sugar over the filled pastry.

  4. 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 + 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 soft, starchy body that gives the filling its texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Lemon peel
Supplies the bright, fragrant citrus aroma and flavor.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky case that holds the filling and bakes crisp.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before filling the pastry. Cooling the filling keeps warm fat from melting through the puff pastry before baking, which would make the layers soggy instead of flaky and well risen.

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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