Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓
Lemon Queens
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, and continue beating.
Add grated rind, lemon juice, and yolks of eggs beaten until thick and lemon-colored.
Mix and sift soda, salt, and flour; add to first mixture and beat thoroughly.
Add whites of eggs beaten stiff.
Bake
Bake from twenty to twenty-five minutes in small tins.
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. See the original page.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
- Butter
- Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
- Eggs
- Yolks add richness and set the structure; whites beaten stiff lighten the batter.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
- Soda
- Reacts with the acidity of the lemon to help the cake rise.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps hold air in the creamed butter.
The step that matters
Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites beaten stiff hold the air that lifts the cake. Overbeating them or stirring too hard after adding them deflates the foam, leaving a dense cake.
“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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