Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake Pudding

A lemon-flavored cheesecake pudding baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cheese Cake Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the lemon base

  1. Remove the rind from the lemons and boil until soft.

  2. Beat the boiled lemons into the sugar.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix in the butter, lemon mixture, and flour.

Bake the crust

  1. Line a pie plate with the crust and bake at 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice and peel, and butter.

  2. Cook for six minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the mixture over the baked crust and bake for a few more minutes.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the filling as they set, and whites add lightness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Flour
Helps thicken the filling and gives it body.
Lemons
Provide acidity and bright lemon aroma from the juice and peel.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolk mixture while stirring constantly. Egg yolk proteins set as they heat, so the mixture thickens into a custard. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the yolks from curdling or scrambling on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes