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Dessert

Lemon Jelly Cake

A sponge cake layered with lemon-flavored jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 cake

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and cold water, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the flour and baking powder until combined.

  5. Divide the batter into three greased cake tins and bake until golden.

Make the lemon jelly

  1. For the jelly, combine ¾ cup sugar, 1 egg, lemon juice, and grated rind in a bowl.

  2. If using, add the grated sour apple to the jelly before cooking.

  3. Cook the mixture over steam until thickened, stirring constantly.

Assemble

  1. Layer the baked cakes with the lemon jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and thicken the lemon jelly as they set with heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the crumb of the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and turn lighter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, in the jelly, helps it thicken and set.
Lemon juice and rind
Provides acidity and aroma, giving the jelly its bright flavour.

The step that matters

Cook the jelly over steam until thickened. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Stirring constantly over steam keeps the mixture from overheating and scrambling, which would leave lumps and a grainy texture.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, flour, lemon):

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

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