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Dessert

Loaf Cake

A light, fluffy lemon loaf cake made with butter, flour, sugar, egg whites, lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Loaf Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Gradually mix in the sifted flour and lemon soda.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  4. Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites.

  5. Fold the egg white mixture into the butter and flour mixture.

  6. Add the lemon juice and rind.

Bake

  1. Line the bottom of a cake pan with buttered paper.

  2. Grease the sides of the pan.

  3. Pour the batter into the pan.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 45 minutes or until done.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 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

Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by carrying fat through the batter.
Pastry flour
Provides structure once set by heat, with low protein for a fine, tender crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they lighten the batter and help the cake rise and set.
Lemon soda
Reacts with the lemon juice to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the batter. Egg whites hold air only when whipped and gently folded; stirring or deflating them vigorously loses volume, leading to a dense, flat loaf.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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