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Dessert

Cheese Cake Custard

A custard dessert made with cottage cheese, eggs, sugar, lemon, and butter baked in a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cottage cheese and butter work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 376 recipes. Both carry gamma-decalactone, which smells peach, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Cake Custard

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.

Prepare

  1. Pass the cottage cheese through a colander.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and stir them into the cheese.

  3. Add the sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, and melted butter, then beat until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a deep pie plate with pastry and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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. Cottage cheese + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  2. Cottage cheese + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cottage cheese
Forms the body of the custard, giving it a soft, creamy, sliceable texture when set.
Eggs
Set on heating to bind the cheese into a firm custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to gentle browning on the surface.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, mild cheese flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel in the custard.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until light and stir them into the cheese. Beating incorporates air and evenly distributes the eggs, so the custard sets smoothly rather than in curds or pockets. Stirring thoroughly prevents streaks of unset egg in the baked pie.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cottage cheese, egg, sugar, butter. 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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