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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A lemon-flavored cake layered with lemon jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Lemon Jelly 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. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

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

  4. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar, then add to the mixture alternately with the milk.

  5. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

Make the jelly

  1. For the jelly, combine the lemon juice, lemon rind, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Stir until the sugar dissolves, then add the 3 beaten eggs.

  3. Place the mixture in a vessel over boiling water and stir until it thickens.

Assemble and finish

  1. Once cool, spread the jelly between the cake layers.

  2. Sprinkle the top with powdered sugar.

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. 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the jelly thicken when heated.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, fine texture when creamed.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Lemon
Provides acidity and bright aroma in both the jelly and the cake.

The step that matters

Thickening the jelly over boiling water. The eggs thicken as their proteins set, but too much heat or too little stirring can curdle them into grainy lumps. Gentle heat and constant stirring keep the jelly smooth and thick.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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