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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A layered cake with lemon-flavored jelly between the layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. 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.

Make the cake batter

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

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until very light.

  3. Pour in the cold water.

  4. Add the flour and beaten egg whites alternately.

  5. Reserve ½ cup of flour to mix with the baking powder.

  6. Stir the reserved flour mixture into the batter last.

Make the lemon jelly

  1. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  2. Add the sugar and grated lemons to the yolks.

  3. Mix the cornstarch with a little cold water.

  4. Pour in ½ pint of boiling water and mix well.

  5. Let the mixture scald.

  6. Stir in the beaten egg whites just before removing from heat.

  7. Allow the jelly to cool before spreading it between the layers of cake.

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. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 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. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to add lift and a light, airy structure.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once set by heat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
Egg yolks
Enrich the jelly and help it thicken and set when heated.
Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon jelly as it heats and scalds.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg whites just before removing from heat. Egg whites lose their airy foam if overheated or overbeaten, and the jelly can curdle if it boils too long. Timing keeps the jelly smooth and the whites light.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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