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Dessert

Lemon Cheese Cake Pudding

A lemon cheesecake pudding baked in a pie crust, made with lemon, sugar, eggs, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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

  1. Remove the rind from the lemons.

  2. Boil the lemons until soft.

  3. Beat the boiled lemons into the sugar.

  4. Beat the egg yolks.

  5. Mix in the butter, lemon mixture, and flour.

  6. Line a pie plate with the crust.

  7. Bake at 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

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

  2. Cook for 6 minutes, stirring constantly, then remove from heat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture over the baked crust.

  3. 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 lighten its texture.
Lemons
Juice and peel add acidity and a bright lemon aroma.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it stay smooth and soft.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky, tender texture to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds a soft, sliceable set.
Pie crust
Forms the base that holds the filling while it bakes.

The step that matters

Cook the filling for 6 minutes while stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the filling thickens smoothly instead of curdling.

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.

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