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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A lemon-flavored cake topped with a lemon jelly.

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

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.

Make the cake batter

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

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

  4. Stir in milk and lemon essence.

  5. Combine flour and baking powder in a separate bowl, then gradually add to wet mixture.

  6. Pour batter into a greased cake pan.

Bake and make the jelly

  1. Bake for 25‑30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

  2. For the jelly, combine sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  3. Beat the mixture together and cook over medium heat until it thickens to a jelly‑like consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve the cake with the lemon jelly on top.

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 + flourtop 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. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set in the batter, and help bind the jelly as it thickens.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the batter stay soft and tender, and sets the jelly when cooked.
Lemon juice
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon jelly over medium heat. Eggs can scramble if overheated. Stirring constantly over medium heat lets the mixture thicken gently and evenly into a smooth, jelly-like consistency.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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