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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A cake made with lemon‑flavored jelly and grated sour apple.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 4 eggs, 1 cup flour, and 2 tablespoons butter until smooth.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon cream of tartar and ½ teaspoon baking soda (or 2 teaspoons baking powder) to the mixture and combine well.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 25–30 minutes or until golden.

Make the lemon jelly

  1. Combine the juice of 1 lemon, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, and grated sour apple in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the mixture together.

  3. Bring the mixture to a hard boil.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat.

  5. Let the mixture cool while the cake bakes.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake batter as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while keeping it tender.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps stabilize the egg foam.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavor to the jelly.

The step that matters

Bring the lemon jelly to a hard boil. The jelly thickens as it cooks and sets as it cools, so it needs enough heat to gel. Removing it from heat too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it stiff or scorch the sugar.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, butter, cream, lemon. 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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