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Dessert

Lemon Layer Cake

A baked lemon cake with a lemon jelly layer.

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

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour and baking powder, then mix in the sweet milk.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly‑cake tins and bake until golden.

Make the lemon jelly

  1. For the jelly, cook hot water, sugar, and corn‑starch together until thick.

  2. Once cooled, stir in the beaten egg and lemon extract or juice.

Assemble

  1. Spread the jelly between the layers of cake.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 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

Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they trap air and help the cake rise and set light.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown as it bakes.
Corn-starch
Thickens the hot water and sugar mixture into a set jelly.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that gives lift. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; stirring vigorously deflates it and yields a dense cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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