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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, sweet milk, cream of tartar, baking soda, and lemon juice, topped with a lemon jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Lemon Cake

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 ↓

Lemon Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour, beaten eggs, sweet milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda; mix well.

Make the jelly

  1. For the jelly, combine sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  2. Boil the jelly mixture until it reaches a jelly-like consistency.

Variation

  1. For an orange cake, substitute lemons with oranges.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb and flavor.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and stabilizes it, helping the leavening work well.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic ingredients to produce gas that helps the cake rise.

The step that matters

Boil the jelly mixture until it reaches a jelly-like consistency. Jelly thickens as it cooks because the eggs set and the sugar and juice concentrate. Stopping too early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make the eggs curdle or turn grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, milk, cream, coffee. 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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Filling 16Almond 5Apple 5with Lemon Jelly 5Raisin 4Italian 3 See all 364 →

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