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.
Prepare the lemon filling
Grate the lemon rind and squeeze the juice.
In a saucepan, combine the lemon juice, sugar, beaten egg, and butter.
Boil the mixture until thick, then set aside to cool.
Make and bake the cake
In a bowl, combine the lightly beaten eggs, sugar, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and milk. Mix until smooth and pour into well-buttered jelly cake tins.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden and cooked through.
Assemble and ice
Once the cakes and lemon mixture are cool, spread the lemon mixture between the layers of cake.
For the icing, mix the beaten egg white with sugar and lemon flavoring until smooth, then spread on top.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a tender texture to the lemon filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps the lemon filling thicken and set.
- Lemon juice
- Provides the sharp acidity that gives the filling its flavor.
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the main structure of the cake batter.
- Cream of tartar
- Stabilizes the egg foam and helps the cake rise and stay tender.
The step that matters
Boil the lemon mixture until thick. The beaten egg must be cooked in the hot lemon mixture so its proteins set and thicken the filling. Undercooking leaves it runny and risks a raw-egg taste, while overheating can curdle it.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, butter, flour, cream, milk):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, butter, flour, cream, milk. 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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