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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A baked cake with a lemon filling made from lemon juice, boiling water, sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Lemon Cake

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Cake

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the milk and baking powder to the butter mixture, then gradually mix in the flour.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently until combined.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the juice of the lemons, boiling water, sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake is cooled, fill it with the lemon filling.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the cake a light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises.
Egg yolks
Thicken the lemon filling as it cooks and add richness.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon filling as it heats.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon filling. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps the egg yolks from scrambling on the bottom of the pan, while the starch and yolks thicken the filling into a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More lemon cake recipes

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