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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake

A lemon custard made by cooking butter, lemon zest, juice, and egg yolks, then poured into jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lemon filling

  1. Melt the butter in an enameled saucepan.

  2. Add the grated rind and strained juice of the lemons to the melted butter.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and strain them into the mixture.

  4. Cook the mixture very slowly, stirring constantly, until it thickens to the consistency of thick honey. Do not let it boil.

Jar and store

  1. Pour the mixture into dry, clean jars and cover tightly once cooled.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they cook and add richness and a smooth, custard-like body.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and helps the filling feel silky.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon rinds
Contribute fragrant aromatic oils and a bright lemon flavour.
Lemon juice
Provides acidity and tartness that cut through the sugar and richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture slowly without boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, thick filling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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