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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A light lemon-flavored cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, lemon juice, and zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Lemon Cake

Why it works: Flour and butter 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

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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Beat the egg yolks until creamy.

  3. Add the sugar and beat until stiff.

  4. Gently fold the yolk mixture into the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  5. Sift half the flour over the mixture.

  6. Fold the sifted flour into the mixture.

  7. Add the remaining flour.

  8. Pour the batter into un-oiled cake pans to make two layers.

  9. Bake for 20 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the egg white with the grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and lemon essence.

  2. Thicken the filling with confectioners' sugar.

  3. Alternatively, mix water, confectioners' sugar, and nut butter until creamy.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air and yolks add richness, setting with heat to give structure.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that sets the cake's crumb once baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the beaten eggs hold a stiff, stable foam.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright lemon flavour to the batter and filling.

The step that matters

Folding the yolk mixture into the whites. Fold the yolk mixture into the stiffly beaten whites gently. Vigorous stirring knocks out the air trapped in the whites, which is what lifts the cake, so a heavy hand leaves it dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter. 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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Filling 16Almond 5Apple 5with Lemon Jelly 5Raisin 4Italian 3 See all 364 →

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