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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A baked cake layered with lemon-flavored jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 Jelly 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.

Prepare the cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the milk, flour, baking powder, and beaten eggs; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into sheets or jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the jelly

  1. For the jelly, combine 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, lemon rind, lemon juice, water, and flour in a bowl.

  2. Place the bowl in a kettle of boiling water and stir until thickened.

Assemble

  1. Once cool, spread the jelly between the cake layers.

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 + 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set the jelly, giving structure to the cake and body to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the crumb and carrying flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake and thickens the jelly as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that gives the jelly its tart, bright flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and jelly and helps the cake brown.

The step that matters

Thickening the jelly over boiling water. Eggs thicken as they heat, but if the mixture gets too hot or is stirred too little it can curdle or stay runny. Gentle, constant stirring over simmering water lets the egg and flour set into a smooth, spreadable jelly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, 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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