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Dessert

To Make Lemon-Cakes a Second Way

A lemon cake made by beating egg whites with flower water, sugar, lemon rind, juice, yolks, and flour, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Make Lemon-Cakes a Second Way

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the egg whites with a whisk for 1 hour with the flower water.

  2. Mix in the sugar and grated lemon rind until well combined.

  3. Add the lemon juice and smooth egg yolks, mixing thoroughly.

  4. Stir in the flour just before transferring to the oven.

Bake

  1. Grease the pan and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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 whites
Whisked to foam, they trap air and give the cake its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and tenderness and help bind the batter as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps stabilise the whisked egg foam.
Flour
Forms the set structure of the crumb as the batter bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour just before transferring to the oven. Flour begins to build gluten once wet and mixed, and the air in the whisked egg whites slowly collapses. Adding flour late and moving the batter to the oven promptly keeps the cake light and prevents it from becoming dense or deflating.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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