Skip to main content
Dessert

Washington Lemon Cake

A lemon-flavored cake with a lemon filling made from rind, pulp, juice, sugar, water, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Washington 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.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour and baking powder until smooth.

  5. Divide the batter evenly among four round cake tins.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the filling, combine the grated lemon rind, pulp, juice, sugar, water, and beaten eggs in a saucepan.

  3. Simmer until it thickens to a jelly consistency.

  4. Let the filling cool before spreading it 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 lemon filling as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the cake rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Simmering the lemon filling. The eggs can scramble if the filling boils hard, and it only thickens to a jelly as the egg proteins set gently over heat. Stir steadily and keep the heat moderate.

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

Filling 16Almond 5Apple 5with Lemon Jelly 5Raisin 4Italian 3 See all 364 →

You might also like

Lemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipesLemon Water IceLemon Water Ice55 recipes