Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, lemon rind, lemon juice, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Cake

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until very light.

  3. Gradually add the sugar to the yolks, then mix in the creamed butter and grated lemon rind.

  4. Alternately add the flour and beaten egg whites until combined.

  5. Stir in the lemon juice.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into buttered pans lined with paper.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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
Yolks add richness and structure, while beaten whites add air and lift to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake, tenderizes the crumb, and helps browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's airy batter together as it sets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the batter.
Lemon rind
Contributes aromatic lemon oils for fragrance and flavour.

The step that matters

Alternately add the flour and beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the beaten whites. Overmixing deflates the batter and makes the cake dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More lemon cake recipes

Filling 16Almond 5Apple 5with Lemon Jelly 5Raisin 4Italian 3 See all 364 →

You might also like

Lemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipesLemon Water IceLemon Water Ice55 recipes