Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Line round tin pans with buttered paper.
Make the batter
Beat the eggs separately until very light.
Mix the egg whites and yolks together.
Add the sugar and then the flour; do not beat after adding flour.
Season with lemon or vanilla to taste.
Pour the batter into the prepared pans, about ¼ inch thick.
Bake and assemble
Bake until golden and set.
Spread jelly on each cake layer and stack them.
Ice the top layer.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Whipped separately, they give the cake its light, airy structure.
- Flour
- Provides the set structure that holds the cake layers together after baking.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and helps the layers brown and stay tender.
- Jelly
- Adds sweetness and moisture between the layers.
The step that matters
Do not beat after adding flour. Once flour is mixed in, gluten develops with further beating, which toughens the cake and makes it dense instead of tender.
“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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