Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cheese-cakes

A baked dessert made with lime rind, lime juice, crumbled sponge cakes, butter, sugar, spices, cream, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese-cakes

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

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the grated lime rind, lime juice, crumbled sponge cakes, softened butter, powdered sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, and beaten eggs until well combined.

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

  3. Bake until set and lightly golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lime + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lime + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the filling into a firm, sliceable custard as they cook.
Sponge cakes
Provide the crumb body that gives the filling its structure and softness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that gives the filling its bright, tart flavour.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the filling smoother and more tender.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the filling runny while overbaking can make it dry and grainy. Look for a set centre that still wobbles slightly.

Swap the lime

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, cream, 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.

More lemon cheesecake recipes

Pudding 3 See all 96 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes