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Dessert

Aunt Phebe's Lemon Cake

A lemon cake with a lemon filling, made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and lemon zest and juice.

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

Aunt Phebe's 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.

Prepare the cake

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the milk and lemon juice and zest.

  5. Combine the flour and baking powder in a separate bowl.

  6. Gradually add the dry mixture to the wet mixture.

  7. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans.

  8. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, beat the egg yolks and whites separately until fluffy.

  2. Combine the egg yolks, sugar, and butter in a saucepan over low heat, stirring until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Stir in the lemon juice and zest.

Assemble

  1. Once the filling is cool, spread it between the layers of the cooled cake.

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.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake crumb.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavour through the batter.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed texture.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma to both the cake and filling.

The step that matters

Thicken the filling over low heat. Egg yolks can scramble if the mixture gets too hot. Cooking gently and stirring constantly lets the yolks thicken the custard smoothly without curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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