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Lemon Cheesecakes

A lemon-flavored cheesecake with a biscuit and almond base, baked in pattypans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Lemon Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Gently melt the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the egg yolks, egg white, lemon rind, lemon juice, Savoy biscuit, pounded almonds, and brandy; mix well.

Make the pastry

  1. Prepare the pastry by mixing 6 ounces of butter with 8 ounces of flour.

  2. Add 6 tablespoons of water to the flour mixture and roll in the remaining butter.

Bake

  1. Fill pattypans with the mixture and bake until set.

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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and white bind the filling and help it set when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to both the filling and the pastry.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry dough.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity that gives the filling its sharp, bright flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the lemon's acidity.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, biscuit, almond, brandy, flour. 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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