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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A lemon cake with a lemon mixture between layers and a lemon-flavored icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the lemon filling

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon and squeeze the juice.

  2. Combine lemon juice, grated rind, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, and butter in a saucepan.

  3. Boil until thick and set aside to cool.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Beat 3 eggs lightly.

  2. Add 1 cup sugar, 1½ cups flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and milk. Mix well.

  3. Pour batter into well-buttered jelly cake tins.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  5. Spread the lemon mixture between the layers of cake.

Make the icing

  1. Beat the egg white lightly.

  2. Mix in 1 cup sugar.

  3. Flavor with lemon until smooth.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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 set the structure of the cake as they cook.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the lemon filling.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Releases gas with the acid in the batter to lighten the cake.

The step that matters

Boil the lemon mixture until thick. Egg yolks in the filling can scramble if overheated, so it should be cooked gently and stirred to thicken smoothly rather than curdle.

Swap the lemon

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

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