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Dessert

Lemon Cake

A lemon cake with flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, cold water, powdered sugar, and lemon zest and juice.

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 cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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 batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and baking soda.

  3. Add the butter and egg yolks, and mix until smooth.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.

  6. Add the cream of tartar and cold water last, mixing until just combined.

Bake and ice

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30–35 minutes.

  2. For the icing, combine the powdered sugar, butter, eggs, grated lemons, and lemon juice in a saucepan.

  3. Boil the mixture until thick, then spread it on the cooled cake layers.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten that build the cake's main structure as it bakes.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the crumb tender and moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon and cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the cake.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and adds acidity that aids rising.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the batter's air, so folding gently keeps that air in. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam and produces a denser, flatter cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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