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Dessert

Lemon Cheese-cakes

A baked lemon-flavored custard dessert made with eggs, cream, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese-cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon and mix it with the sugar.

  2. Crush and combine with the yolks of three eggs and the whisked whites.

  3. Beat the mixture thoroughly, then add the cream, oiled butter, and strained lemon juice gradually.

Bake

  1. Line pattypans with puff-paste and fill them halfway with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Orange + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites thicken and set the filling as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender, smooth texture to the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the set custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Rind gives aroma and juice adds acidity that brightens the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture thoroughly before adding the liquids. Thorough beating blends the sugar, egg and fat evenly so the filling bakes smooth rather than grainy or separated. Adding butter and juice gradually helps the emulsion stay stable.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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