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Dessert

White Lincoln Jelly Cake

A light, fluffy cake made with sugar, butter, flour, sweet milk, egg whites, and baked, then layered with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

White Lincoln 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. 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

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

Make and bake the cake

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until smooth.

  2. Fold in the egg whites gently until fully incorporated.

  3. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Cool and finish

  1. Let the cakes cool before layering with jelly or lemon butter.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped air and protein give the cake lift and a light, tender structure.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, soft crumb when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas and help the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that stabilises the egg whites and works with baking soda to aid rising.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Egg whites hold the air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring vigorously or overmixing knocks out this air and yields a dense, heavy cake.

“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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