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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cakes

A baked lemon-flavored cheese cake made with almonds, rose water, lemon peel, sugar, butter, eggs, and pastry-lined pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Lemon Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Pound the almonds with rose water in a mortar until smooth.

  2. Mix in the grated lemon peel, powdered sugar, melted butter, egg yolks, and egg whites.

  3. Beat all ingredients together until well combined.

Bake

  1. Line patty pans with pastry and fill with the mixture.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Blanched sweet almonds
Ground to a smooth paste, they give the filling body, richness and a nutty flavor.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help the filling set firmly when baked.
Egg whites
Add protein that coagulates on heating, giving the baked filling its set structure.
Melted butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich texture and smooth mouthfeel.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves smoothly into the batter for a fine texture.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Egg proteins set as they heat, so pulling the filling once it is just firm keeps it tender. Overbaking makes egg-rich fillings dry, rubbery or grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, rose, sugar, butter, 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.

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