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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A sweet cake with lemon flavor and a lemon filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

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. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the flour, sweet milk, and baking powder, mixing well.

  4. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Fold the whipped egg whites into the batter gently.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, dissolve the corn starch or flour in a little water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the dissolved mixture with lemon juice, lemon zest, egg yolks, sugar, butter, and boiling water.

  3. Cook in a double boiler until thickened, then remove from heat and fold in the whipped egg whites.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Builds the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the batter, while yolks enrich the filling and help it thicken.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake and a smooth body to the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats, giving it a spoonable set.
Lemons
Juice adds sharp acidity and zest adds bright aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until thickened. Corn starch thickens only when it heats fully, but the egg yolks can scramble and curdle if the mixture overheats. Gentle double-boiler heat, stirred steadily, keeps the filling smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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