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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cakes

A baked apple and lemon cake made with puff pastry, butter, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Lemon Cheese Cakes

Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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.

Make the filling

  1. Pare and core the apples, then boil them in a small amount of water until soft.

  2. Mash the apples until very smooth.

  3. Stir in the lemon juice, grated lemon peel, egg yolks, and softened butter until well combined.

  4. Sweeten the mixture to taste with pounded loaf sugar.

Bake

  1. Line patty pans with rich puff pastry and fill with the apple mixture.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until 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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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. Butter + sugartop 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

Apples
Cook down to a soft pulp that forms the body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the filling.
Lemons
Add acidity and aroma that brighten the sweet apple filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp case that holds the filling while baking.

The step that matters

Mash the apples until very smooth. Any lumps left after cooking will stay in the baked filling and create an uneven texture. Thorough mashing gives a silky, even mixture that sets smoothly with the yolks.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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