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Dessert

Chooey Cheese Cake

A baked cottage cheese cake flavored with lemon and sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cottage cheese 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 ↓

Chooey Cheese Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, blend sugar and butter, then add eggs and beat until very light.

  2. Add cottage cheese and beat for 2 minutes longer.

  3. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, then add to the mixture.

  4. Finally, add lemon juice and rind, and beat for 5 minutes before baking.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased layer pan and bake for about 35 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 + cottage cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together376 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + cottage cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together601 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking.
Cottage cheese
Adds moisture and creamy body to the batter.
Flour
Gives the cake structure as its starches set when heated.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the batter and give a lighter crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown lightly while beating in air.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs. Beating the sugar, butter and eggs until very light traps air that helps the cake rise. Under-beating leaves a dense texture, while over-mixing after adding flour can toughen it.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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