Skip to main content
Dessert

Melon Cake— No. 1

A cake made with egg yolks, whole eggs, sugar, warm water, flour, corn starch, baking powder, melted butter, and lemon or mace flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Melon Cake— No. 1

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Whip egg yolks, whole eggs, sugar, and warm water until light, using a double boiler.

  2. Add lemon extract or mace for flavor.

  3. Gradually mix in flour and corn starch.

Bake

  1. Grease the pans and bake in a fairly warm oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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 yolks
Add richness and structure, helping the batter set into a tender crumb.
Whole eggs
Trap air when whipped and give the cake lift and structure as it sets.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Corn starch
Softens the crumb by diluting the flour's gluten, giving a finer, more tender texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilize the whipped foam.

The step that matters

Whipping the eggs and sugar until light. Whipped eggs and sugar hold the air that gives the cake its rise. Under-whipping leaves a dense cake, and the foam can deflate if the flour is folded in roughly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, corn, butter. 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 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipes